[Info-vax] Long uptime cut short by Hurricane Sandy

[Paul Sture]

In article <keenff$tel$1 at Iltempo.Update.UU.SE>,
 Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:

> On 2013-01-31 20:22, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> > In article <keeb7i$e15$1 at dont-email.me>,
> > 	Stephen Hoffman <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> writes:
> >> On 2013-01-31 17:38:45 +0000,   VAXman-  @SendSpamHere.ORG said:
> >>
> >>> $ filename =
> >>> filenameprefix+"_"+F$fao("!19AS",F$cvtime(,"COMPARISON"))-"-"-"-"-"
> >>> "-":"-":"+".dmp"
> >>
> >> Yeah.  Or add the prefix and the underscore into the f$fao, as that
> >> avoids clobbering caracters in the prefix.
> >
> > And tell me how the above is not cryptic?  Just what is the difference
> > between the first dash and the second?  Or the third?  And would anyone
> > normal determine that?  :-)
> 
> Maybe it would be more obvious with some appropriately placed spaces...
> 
> $ filename = filenameprefix + "_" + 
> F$fao("!19AS",F$cvtime(,"COMPARISON")) - "-" - "-" - "-" - ":" - ":" + 
> ".dmp"
>
> Ie, remove three dashes and two colons, and then add something at the 
> end. (Ignoring what's going on at the beginning.)

I prefer to space it out like that.

> As the for F$FAO and F$CVTIME functions, you obviously need to read the 
> documentation to know exactly what they produce.

Certainly when I've been away from DCL for a while, I will put a comment 
in such as:

$! F$cvtime returns yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss.cc. Strip dashes and colons.

Actually, in this example I'd probably use f$element delimited on the 
space to get separate date and time variables, which I'd concatenate.

Here's the bash I use to format a daily backup prefix:

# Get date as YYYY.MM-DD-HHMM
NOW=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d-%H%M")
DUMPID="sture-$NOW"
echo $DUMPID

Sample output:

sture-2013-02-02-1507

-- 
Paul Sture