[Info-vax] Cross platform copying strategies

[Wilm Boerhout]

JF Mezei mentioned  on 20-12-2009 9:14:
> Say I have a directory structure which has both text (variable length
> records), and various formats of binary images/movies/sounds. (fixed
> length, stmlf etc).
> 
> 
> From within VMS,  COPY and BACKUP to the remote NFS server don't seem to
> convert the variable length files to unix text files.
> 
> I have the MOUNT of the DNFS devides as /SERVER=UNIX and "/STRUCTURE=5".
> I was under the impression that VMS would be smart enough to convert
> text files back to unix text files when sending a text file over to a
> unis system.
> 
> 
> 
> From the OS-X platform, using VMS as NFS server, VMS seems to add junk
> to end of files.
> 
> FTP would work, but then, I would have to manually extract text files
> and then TYPE IMAGE and manually extract binary files. Not exactly
> "automated".
> 
> 
> So, is ZIP the only truly workable option where ZIP will store all files
> properly and I should be able to then FTP a single file in binary mode
> and then unpack it on the target system ?
> 
> On VMS, is there a way to tell ZIP to take everything in a directory
> structure ? Or must one supply the complete line of files to include in
> the archive ?

I've always found the ZIP to be the most complete in doing VMS <<-->> 
other filesystems.

It will also preserve file attributes and ODS-5 stuff when going from 
one VMS to another, and is flexible with version numbers as well.

Look at the extract from short help below,

/Wilm

Copyright (c) 1990-2009 Info-ZIP - Type 'zip "-L"' for software license.
Zip 3.1b BETA (Apr 9th 2009). Usage: zip == "$ disk:[dir]zip.exe"

   -r   recurse into directories
   -l   convert LF to CR LF (-ll CR LF to LF)
   -C   preserve case of file names
   -C-  down-case all file names
   -C2  preserve case of ODS2 names
   -C2- down-case ODS2 file names
   -C5  preserve case of ODS5 names*
   -C5- down-case ODS5 file names
   -V   save VMS file attributes
   -VV  also save allocated blocks past EOF
   -w   store file version numbers
   -ww  store file version numbers as ".nnn"