[Info-vax] Saving data

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2011-04-30 17:39, glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:
> Bill Gunshannon<billg999 at cs.uofs.edu>  wrote:
>
> (snip)
>> You know, someone accused me of not listening or mis-interpreting but
>> sadly, so are a lot of other people.
>
>> This is not my machine.  I am a mere user.  I can not install anything
>> (thus my asking what I would need to do for others to use ZIP from my
>> directory!!)  They would not install ZIP back when this was an active
>> machine for reasons I have stated here repeatedly not just in this thread
>> but often over the last 20 years.  They certainly would not consider
>> installing anything now.  they want to shut it down.  They want to kill
>> it.  They want VMS to be gone once and for all and they don't care if
>> users save their data or not.
>
> I did notice that the suggestion installed it in system space,
> but I believe that it will work in user space.  Generate the logical
> name pointing to your directory instead of the system directory.

Hmm. In short, yes, this is correct. The binary can live anywhere, and 
it works equally fine.

A little nitpicking:
It's not "installed". It mere lives in a directory. System space and 
user space normally are not used to refer to directories, but to memory 
spaces in ram, as referred to by the CPU through the MMU.

Some directories are used by the system for various purposes, but this 
does not imply anything more than that it is a convention used by system 
programs. You do not *need* to follow these conventions, although 
sometimes it makes your life easier.

"Installed" in VMS speak means that you have made the executable (or 
library) known to the system. You do this with the INSTALL command 
(program). To do this, you need privileges, and you can in turn bestow 
privileges on programs this way.

ZIP and UNZIP do not need any privileges, and thus do not need to be 
made known to the system. They are just plain user programs, just like 
any other you might have. The system don't need to know anything special 
about them.

> I do remember years ago installing programs in my directory
> that needed to be added to the command table, and figuring out
> how to do that for just myself.  I forget now the name of the
> program that does that, but it compiles from a special file that
> gives the command options.

Yes, adding "normal" commands to DCL is a bit more complex, because you 
need to give syntax for the command, switches, parameters and so on in a 
special file. You then add the command to DCL with the SET COMMAND 
command (if I remember right). This is not required to run the program, 
but only to make the program known as a command in DCL, so that when you 
give the command, the program is run.

By defining a symbol, you can invoke the program as a command in DCL in 
an alternative way, where DCL do not do any syntax checking of the line, 
but just pass it verbatim to the program, and then the program will have 
to parse it all by itself.

Logical names is yet another thing in VMS, and those can be used 
somewhat similar to environment variables in Unix. They are mostly used 
to point to files or directories, but also defines values that some 
programs and utilities use. For instance the welcome message printed out 
when someone connects to a VMS system is a logical name.

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol