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

[Bob Koehler]

In article <howard-91AFF9.16234514082012 at news.giganews.com>, Howard S Shubs <howard at shubs.net> writes:
> 
> Remember command and filename completion on TOPS-20?  Fantastic.

   Yes, but TOPS-20 EXEC had those (flavor) words in the middle of it's
   commands, and the blasted sub-command entries.

   For those who didn't use it, the (flavor) words were optional and enclosed 
   in parentheses.  Nobody typed them in, but command completion would
   put them in:

   Entered manually (@ is the prompt):

      @COPY A.MAC B.MAC

   Entered with the help of file name and command completion:

      @COPY A.MAC (TO) B.MAC

   And to get a subcommand, you had to end a line with a ",", this is
   the equivalent of DCL PURGE (@@ is the subcommand prompt):

      @DELETE *.*,
      @@KEEP 1

   Can you imagine what happened when you forgot the ","?  Well, no, it
   wasn't that bad.  "DELETE *.*" always prompted with "ARE YOU SURE?".

   You also couldn't readily stuff those into command scripts, as EXEC
   had no ability to pass arguments to command scripts.  To do that
   you had to switch to a different interpreter, which was available
   on a free "tools" tape, along with other goodies like the BLISS-10
   compiler.