[Info-vax] OpenVMS TCPIP equivalent of hosts.deny?

[Steven Schweda]

> Sounds a bit obfustication to me, when all that should be
> needed is a simple manually editable text file. Why make it
> more complicated than it needs to be ?...

   One advantage of this scheme is that it can catch errors
in the user-supplied input while the user is present. 
Sure, one could edit a file which is read by some low-level,
non-interactive, network software, but delivering complaints
about those data is trickier.

   I've added errors to TCPIP$SMTP.CONF, for example, and not
noticed them for long times, because if the complaints go
anywhere, it's to log files which are seldom of interest to
anyone, and so almost never get read.