[Info-vax] SET SHADOW SYNTAX

[Phillip Helbig---undress to reply]

In article <j7n2bh$2qb$1 at usenet01.boi.hp.com>, "Robert A. Brooks"
<rab at aitchpee.com> writes: 

> > Normally, single parameters after "=" are OK, but more than one give
> >
> >     %DCL-W-PARMDEL, invalid parameter delimiter - check use of special characters
> >
> > with the complaint about the first character after "=" being an invalid
> > delimiter.  The solution is to enclose the list in parentheses.
> > However, as long as there is only one parameter per "=", everything is
> > OK, e.g. $ DIR/SEL=SIZ=MIN=1000.  SET SHADOW seems to obey these rules,
> > but $ SET SHADOW/POLICY=HBMM=MASTER_LIST=* doesn't; one has to specify
> > $ SET SHADOW/POLICY=HBMM=(MASTER_LIST=*).  Why is this?
> 
> I don't know; I didn't work on the command parsing.  It's troublesome to 
> me that this requirement is not explicitly called out in the help,
> and the examples listed are somewhat misleading if that is a requirement.

FWIW, HELP says: 

       An HBMM policy specification consists
       of a list of these keywords enclosed within parentheses. Only the
       MASTER_LIST keyword is required. If COUNT and RESET_THRESHOLD are
       omitted, default values are applied.

One could parse this as implying that parentheses are always required,
but OTOH if there is only one required keyword, and one specifies only
that keyword, then it is not a list (is a list of one thing still a
list?) or at least I would expect the behaviour to be consistent with 
AFAIK all of DCL.