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From: LEICHTER-JERRY@YALE.ARPA
Newsgroups: mod.computers.vax
Subject: Re: Redirecting boadcast messages
Message-ID: <8611070848.AA02903@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Fri, 7-Nov-86 03:48:45 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8611070848.AA02903
Posted: Fri Nov  7 03:48:45 1986
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    Is there a way to redirect the broadcast messages that are messing up
    my screen? Suppressing them is like killing the innocent postman.
    Wouldn't something like
    
       $ SET BRO=MAIL/DEV=MY.LOGFIL
    
    be _very_ useful? ...
VMS for quite some time - perhaps since V1? - has provided an object known as
an broadcast mailbox.  (Technically, all there really is is an "associated
mailbox"; one of these on a terminal with BRDCSTMBX set is what I'm calling a
"broadcast mailbox".)  When a broadcast mailbox is associated with a terminal,
broadcasts sent to the terminal aren't displayed; rather, they are written to
the mailbox.  Some program will then presumably read the broadcast from the
mailbox and do something appropriate with it.

There is no command even vaguely analogous to the one you give above.  It IS
possible to write a program that runs as a subprocess, grabbing stuff from a
broadcast mailbox and writing it to a file.  Not hard, but not trivial either.

SMG provides a function, SMG$SET_BROADCAST_TRAPPING, that helps with the
administrivia of creating, declaring, and using a broadcast mailbox; you'd
still have work to do, though.

It used to be the case (V3) that you could not SPAWN an interactive subprocess
if the terminal you were on had an associated mailbox.  I don't believe this
is now the case, but I'm not absolutely certain.

The place to learn about broadcast mailboxes is in the I/O User's Guide, Part
I.  In the 4.2 doc set, the relevent section is 8.2.4, Terminal/Mailbox
Interaction.
							-- Jerry
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