Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!ucsd!telesoft!rlk
From: rlk@telesoft.UUCP (Bob Kitzberger @sation)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: Help with VAX Pascal
Summary: Yet another command line passing mechanism
Keywords: pascal vms
Message-ID: <323@telesoft.UUCP>
Date: 15 Oct 88 04:05:29 GMT
References: <5900@june.cs.washington.edu> <5214@juniper.uucp> <21670@cornell.UUCP>
Organization: TeleSoft Inc., San Diego, CA
Lines: 40

Barry B Werger writes: 

> Does anyone know how to receive a command-line parameter in VAX Pascal?

Three methods have been proposed : 
     o LIB$GET_FOREIGN   (passed as a single non-parsed string)
     o CLI$ routines     (conforming to VMS syntax)
     o GETARGS           (or somesuch package for mimicking UNIX argv/argc)

Here's another.  It's been a little while, and UNIX has since wreaked havoc 
with my once-VMS brain, so bear with the ambiguity ;-)
     
A quick & dirty method (that is also rather flexible) is to have a small DCL
command procedure that copies the DCL parameters P1 P2 ... P9 to symbols, and
then executes your Pascal program.

	$ FILEIN  :== P1
	$ FILEOUT :== P2
	$ BLAT 	  :== P3
	$ RUN PASCAL_STUFF

etc.  Then, use LIB$GET_SYMBOL in your Pascal program to extract the string
values of the parameters FILEIN, FILEOUT, and BLAT into string variables.
Sorry I can't provide proper syntax.  The DCL shell approach also allows you to
perform checking for existence of FILEIN, mount tapes, etc. - things that are
less elegant in Pascal.

Good luck!

	.Bob.

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