[Info-vax] DCL, was: Re: Microkernel

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2012-08-16 14:54, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
> In article <k0h8lu$vqn$1 at Iltempo.Update.UU.SE>, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> writes:
>> Maybe I should clarify that by "quick search and recall" I did not mean
>> execution time to do the actual search, but how quick and convenient it
>> is to access for a user. As such, typing whole commands, perhaps several
>> commands, to do it, makes it cumbersome compared to just pressing a key
>> or two, and have the whole process done for you in the current command line.
>>
>> 	Johnny
>>
>
> OK.  So, put a wrapper around DCL.EXE and introduce your OWN ^R handler
> to read in the recall buffer and provide editing.  Of course, a ^R has
> been used as a screen refresh in a number of VMS products/utilities, so
> you willl probably want to use some other control char.  You can still
> specify your OWN CLI in your UAF record!

Certainly doable. But that is another thing. We were (I thought) talking 
about history preservation and use cases in DCL compared to shells like 
bash. Some people questioned the need to preserve history between 
sessions. I made a comment that without quick search and recall of the 
command history, I don't see much point in preserving history between 
sessions either, as it really only becomes useful (in my opinion) once 
you can easily and quickly search and recall your command history. And 
as (in my opinion) that does not exist in DCL, the need for history 
preservation isn't that big either.

Writing my own CLI for VMS does nothing for changing how DCL works, not 
to mention the non-existing documentation for doing such a thing.

Also, unless I remember wrong, tcsh (and I think bash) have already been 
ported to VMS, so I can just as well just use them.
They are not proper CLIs, though, if I understand things right, but just 
user applications (quite like how they are under Unix).

	Johnny