[Info-vax] 64 bit DCL ?

[David Froble]

JF Mezei wrote:
> On 15-01-18 15:34, David Froble wrote:
> 
>> Depending upon perspective, I'd argue that DCL is not really tied or 
>> part of VMS. 

Key word here is "perspective".

> Hoff pointed out that the CLI parsing routines, used by applications to
> get their arguments, are part of VMS run time, not part of DCL.EXE

Libraries.

The core OS is things such as scheduler, memory management, to some 
extent device drivers, and such.  Yes, libraries and utilities are 
bundles as part of the OS, and it would be rather useless without them, 
but I at least do see a slight difference.

> Except for the TCPIP utilities, just about every utility/application
> that is packaged with VMS is built to call on the DCL parsing routines
> to get their arguments.  And inside many utilities, the symtax also
> makes use of DCL parsing.   Same with "HELP and the utilities providing
> help from within.  And HELP is one of VMS' strong points compared to all
> others on the market today.

I understand what you wrote, but, isn't the usage of the library stuff 
just that, library stuff?  Since in general it is DCL that invokes the 
utilities, then it's reasonable for the utilities to follow the DCL syntax.

> Try finding the man page that describes the loop operator "for" in bash.
> 
> So it looks to me like VMS and DCL  are married at the hip.
> 

In the end, as with any other OS, it's a package.  Don't know why I 
differentiate.  Guess I'm just difficult.  Maybe it's that I don't see 
VMS as a monolithic entity, rather I consider the parts of the whole.