[Info-vax] Hex editor for VMS Alpha ?

[Simon Clubley]

On 2017-07-09, Simon Clubley <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote:
> What are people using for a hex editor on VMS Alpha these days ?
>

I've now looked at the various options which people have suggested
and have chosen dix for now as it is by far the best of the options
I have tried even though it does have the reversed hex problem.

Here is a brief writeup on the various options I have tried from
worse to best.

patch/absolute
--------------

Oh, well. :-)

I think the best thing which can be said about this option is that
if you are still stuck using ASR33 units as an input device then
patch/absolute will work perfectly in this environment. You will go
through paper very quickly however due to patch/absolute's apparent
inability to print more than one value on the same line.

vfe
---

The hex editor which multiple people have suggested.

This has a very VMS "feel" to it but is a command line only editor
without any interactive cursor based editor.

I like the support for record mode in addition to the traditional
block mode.

Exploration ended quickly however when I could not get the change
command to work as documented in the help file because of an error
in LIB$TPARSE.

$ mcr [.vfe]vfe.alpha_exe ow2.dat/w
MCCCD VFE V3.0 12-JUL-2017 07:00
File accessed with write enabled
Block 1
1> get 2
2> h

[file contents deleted]

2> c ,"hello"
%LIB-F-SYNTAXERR, string syntax error detected by LIB$TPARSE

Various other change syntax styles were tried and all resulted in
the above error.

charm
-----

Interesting little utility with a cleanly laid out display. I like
the interactive editor but noticed that the height of the screen
display does not adapt to the terminal height when running large
terminal windows.

Block mode only; no apparent record support.

BE CAREFUL WITH THIS UTILITY HOWEVER: Pressing ^L and <CR> when
a filename was not specified resulted in the boot block for the
volume being loaded.

After exit, it also left the 51 line terminal window with a scrolling
window in the top part of they display.

dix
---

Very nice with both block and record support, but the reversed hex mode
is confusing, especially when you are entering hex numbers as you need
to enter the lowest digit first.

I could not get the demo mode to run until I defined a foreign symbol
for DIX (I was initially running it using MCR) and when I did, the demo
mode failed with various errors.

The default startup mode is longword decimal which is unusable. Use the
/hex qualifier on the command line to get a usable display. PF2 will
give you a list of keyboard options you can use.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world