[Info-vax] DCL's flaws (both scripting and UI)

[John Reagan]

On Wednesday, January 21, 2015 at 2:12:43 PM UTC-5, David Froble wrote:

> Since I worked with Basic+ on RSTS V4b, yes, you'd be very correct. 
> Many things have been added to VAX/DEC Basic.  An example, the RECORD 
> construct, which opened up the capability for complex user declared 
> variable types.
> 
> I'm guessing the few compiler people figured that if they were going to 
> implement some feature, why not in all the languages, not just one.
> 
> Comments John?

I doubt RECORD was added to BASIC just because it was in the another language.
We had no such concept to turn all the languages into single super-language.
We didn't add packed decimal to Fortran just because it is in COBOL, for
instance.

It probably was added (I have no connection) since it made DEC BASIC more
compatible with VMS and its interfaces.  I'll make the same argument with
most of the features added to VAX Pascal V2 back in 1980ish, why we added 
%LOC and %DESCR to Fortran, etc.  It was probably all slanted toward the
common language environment and VMS' interfaces (hard to play with a FAB 
if you don't have some notion of a structure or group - or you have no 
typing like BLISS/Macro32).

VAX/DEC BASIC is quite different than the BASIC standards

* ANSI/ISO/IEC Standard for Minimal BASIC:
          o ANSI X3.60-1978 "FOR MINIMAL BASIC"
          o ISO/IEC 6373:1984 "DATA PROCESSING - PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES - MINIMAL BASIC"
    * ANSI/ISO/IEC Standard for Full BASIC:
          o ANSI X3.113-1987 "PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES FULL BASIC"
          o ISO/IEC 10279:1991 "INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY - PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES - FULL BASIC"

Nobody has ever complained about that, right?