Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!enea!sommar
From: sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: Help us defend against VMS!
Message-ID: <2906@enea.se>
Date: 23 Mar 88 23:20:05 GMT
References: <341@wsccs.UUCP>
Reply-To: sommar@enea.UUCP(Erland Sommarskog)
Followup-To: comp.os.vms
Organization: ENEA DATA AB, Sweden
Lines: 47
Keywords: Command definition


Ah, it's not really over yet. But get to the next article if you feel
you have more important things to do.

Val Kartchner (val@wsccs.UUCP) writes:
>    And what about consistency?  A comparison of a (hypothetical) command on
>    Eunuchs and VMS:
>
>	    flame/full/type=(eunuchs,consistency) commands
>	       vs
>            flame -f -t=(eunuchs,consistency) commands
>
>    In the VMS environment, the command would be parsed (and verified
>    syntactically correct) in a consistent manner before the program (image)
>    was even loaded.  In the Eunuchs evironment, the command parsing is left
>    totally up to the programmer.  This means a wide variety (and
>    inconsistent) method of parsing between programmers.  (Sometimes the
>    options to the "-" command must follow immediately, other times a space,
>    and other times an equals.)

And you forgot to mention another real bonus: When you have multi-letter
options in Unix, you are forced to type the entire option. Same goes for 
the command. In VMS you have to type what is significant. So you memorize
as Val wrote above, but you only type 
    fl/fu/t=(eu, cons) commands
if you feel like. 
  For options parsing this is possible in Unix, but I have never seen it. 
(But I'm sure it exists somewhere.) For commands it's dead. (You can 
define an alias, but it's not really the same, since you abbreviate them.)

Andy Rosen (arosen@hawk.ulowell.edu) comments Val's article:
>Which means DCL has to know the syntax of every command on the sytem.  Yeah,
>real modern.  Makes it real easy to add commands to the system, too.
>Especially for users who write their own private little utilities.  Can you
>say search path?

Can you say Command Definition Utility? Can you say foreign command line?
With CDU you can define your own DCL commands. It's fairly easy for 
a somewhat experienced VMS user. If you want to parse the command line 
yourself, you use a foreign command line instead. 
  Say what you want of DCL's syntax checks, but VMS does here provide a 
tool here that Unix doesn't. And being used to it, I miss it on Unix.
-- 
Erland Sommarskog       
ENEA Data, Stockholm        
sommar@enea.UUCP           "Si tu crois l'amour tabou...
                            Regarde bien, les yeux d'un fou!!!" -- Ange