[Info-vax] Databases, LDAP and the limitations of RMS-file-based authentication

[Bob Gezelter]

On Tuesday, December 23, 2014 11:15:53 PM UTC-5, David Froble wrote:
> Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> 
> > As opposed to the VMS guy who spends a whole lot of time working on Unix 
> > and C, and with C on VMS?  (Having a more robust C environment would be 
> > useful on VMS -- working on a list of the local snags with C99 and C11 to 
> > send along to Mr Reagan as part of that -- and maybe access to some newer 
> > tools like, maybe, Rust would be nice.  The versions of Fortran or BASIC 
> > available for VMS, alas, tend to be non-starters for the sort of work I 
> > usually use C for.   If not C on VMS, it'd be Bliss or Macro32, but then 
> > more folks are familiar with C than with either Bliss or Macro32.)
> 
> Gee, and just why are some of the legacy (stuff that works) non-starters?
> 
> I mean, I just figured there is / was this thing called the VMS calling 
> standard, that every language (except for C) seems to respect, and so 
> one should be able call code from any VMS language.
> 
> How naive could I be?
> 
> It's crap such as this that makes me thing that VMS is good and *ix and 
> C are bad.
> 
> I still cannot understand why I could not call the SSL routines from 
> Basic, and I still cannot understand how VMS development could have 
> stooped so low as to throw things out there that could only be called 
> from C.
> 
> (Now I'll probably still be upset on Christmas, call me the grinch)

David,

Insofar as I know, there is no reason that you cannot call SSL routines from BASIC (I have been invoking C routines from BASIC for decades, literally).

If the data structure definitions provided as C header files are not supplied in forms compatible with BASIC, one may have to translate the data structure/record definitions, but that is not a major job, just tedious.

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com