[Info-vax] OpenVMS - file selection abnormally with Copy / Rename or user ignorance?

[mcleanjoh at gmail.com]

On Saturday, March 28, 2015 at 3:08:12 PM UTC+11, JF Mezei wrote:
> On 15-03-27 23:02, IanD wrote:
> 
> > The files throwing an error are indeed open for write access BUT they fall outside the creation date time for the file selection command, so they should not be in the attempted copy/rename selection set
> > 
> > The command is of the form: copy/log/before=today *.log;* [.old]*.*;*
> 
> 
> Not 100% sure of the actual inner workings, but in order to obtain file
> attributes (such as date modified), I believe that $OPEN or the
> equivalent need to be called so it populates the various RMS data
> structures.
> 
> So it may be hitting the "file open for write" as it tries to obtain
> file attributes, and thus before it knows that this file falls outside
> search criteria and should not be copied.
> 
> It has been a while so I don't recall the exact system services needed
> prior to being able to get the file attributes from RMS.

Yes, the dates are stored in the header block (i.e. in INDEXF.SYS) and a file that's open for write is likely to modify the data, so I'm not surprised that COPY/SINCE= and RENAME/SINCE= object and that omitting the /SINCE works fine.

A question for IanD, are you sure they are errors?

I think you are more likely to get %W messages (i.e. warnings), rather than "%E" (error), at least that's the way I would have written COPY and RENAME.