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From: carl@CITHEX.CALTECH.EDU (Carl J Lydick)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: Yet another bug in VMS C
Message-ID: <870728114022.02d@CitHex.Caltech.Edu>
Date: Tue, 28-Jul-87 14:50:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: CitHex.870728114022.02d
Posted: Tue Jul 28 14:50:36 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Aug-87 11:56:25 EDT
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 > I have discovered truly bizarre behavior in C for VAX/VMS.  The
 > command-line arguments are folded to all lowercase.  The only way of
 > preserving case seems to be to enclose arguments in double quotes.
 > Thus a command like
 >
 >      tr a-z A-Z 
 >  
 > won't work.
 > 
 > How does one tell it not to do it?  I could find no references to this
 > in the index of the VMS C manual.

This is not bizarre behavior on the part of C; it is well-documented behavior
on the part of both DCL and C.  Quoting from page 11-31 of "Programming
in VAX C":
	DCL converts most arguments on the command line to uppercase letters.
	However, VAX C internally parses and midifies the altered command line
	to make VAX C argument access compatible with C programs developed on
	other systems.

	All alphabetic arguments in the commnd line are delimited by spaces or
	tabs. Arguments that have embedded spaces or tabs must be enclosed in
	quotation marks (" "). Uppercase characters in arguments are converted
	to lowercase, but arguments within quotation marks are left unchanged.