[Info-vax] VMS dying? Nah, it refused to die here

[johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk]

On Tuesday, 23 September 2014 22:17:10 UTC+1, Norm Raphael  wrote:
> >On 09/23/14, VAXman- at SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
> 
>  >
> 
> >In article <lkr8fb-diu2.ln1 at news.chingola.ch>, Paul Sture <nospam at sture.ch> writes:
> 
> >
> 
> >>>$ shutdown -h now
> 
> >>>%DCL-W-DEFOVF, too many command procedure parameters - limit to eight
> 
> >
> 
> >Well VMS did refuse to die at the bidding of a Unix command :-)
> 
> >
> 
> >> Hey Paul, try this (assuming a fairly recent OpenVMS):
> 
> >>
> 
> >> $ MCR SYSGEN
> 
> >> SYSGEN> SET DCL_CTLFLAGS 8
> 
> >> SYSGEN> WRITE ACTIVE
> 
> >> SYSGEN> EXIT
> 
> >> $ shutdown -h now
> 
> >>
> 
> >> PS, don't do it in production. ;)
> 
> >>
> 
> >>Can't wait to see what it does :-)
> 
> >
> 
> >It makes DCL accept up to 16 arguments instead of the typical 8 arguments.
> 
> >Your "-h" and "now" would become parameters P9 and P10 and the shutdown 
> 
> >procedure would be off and marching!
> 
> 
> 
> ...and this is documented where?
> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
>  Norman F. Raphael
> 
> "Everything worthwhile eventually 
> 
> degenerates into real work." -Murphy

A search, using everyone's favourite search engine, for
"dcl_ctlflags 8" found it in the VMS 8.4 DCL Dictionary at 
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/84final/9996/9996pro_18.html?jumpid=reg_r1002_caen
though I don't know when it first arrived.

"Setting bit 3 of DCL_CTLFLAGS to 1, specifies from one to sixteen
optional parameters to pass to the command procedure. The symbols
(P1, P2, ... P16) are assigned character string values in the order
of entry. If you clear the bit 3 of DCL_CTLFLAGS, the default
parameters are set (that is, (P1, P2, ... P8))."

Documentation - stuff that software used to have before Windows and
illiterate youths came along.