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From: tedcrane@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Ted Crane)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: Extracting a Tape Volume Label...
Message-ID: <1002@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Date: Wed, 13-May-87 10:36:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: batcompu.1002
Posted: Wed May 13 10:36:18 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 16-May-87 07:08:05 EDT
References: <1318@ur-tut.UUCP>
Reply-To: tedcrane@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu.UUCP (Ted Crane)
Organization: Program of Computer Graphics, Cornell University
Lines: 27

In article <1318@ur-tut.UUCP> agoe@ur-tut.UUCP (Karl Cialli) writes:
>I working on a small integrated BACKUP/TAPE Management Facility for our site
>and I am yet to be able to find a way to extract a magnetic tape's volume
>label for use in a DCL com file. 

I assume you don't mind physically mounting the tape on the drive!  There
is no lexical in the world that'll help you if the tape is in the rack!
Seriously, now:

$!
$! First, mount the tape with over=id, so you don't need to know the
$! label.  Note that the second parameter is a space...this is just a
$! placeholder so you can enter a third parameter, TAPE, which will
$! be a convenient logical name for the tape drive.
$!
$ mount/nowrite/override=identification tape-device " " TAPE
$!
$! Now, you can get the volume label fairly easily:
$!
$ VOLUME_LABEL = f$getdvi(TAPE,"volnam")
$!
$! Dismount the tape, use nounload if you are going to reuse it immediately
$!
$ dismount/nounload TAPE

This is based on some code I've used for disks...I haven't tried it on
a tape for a long time, if ever, but it ought to work.