[Info-vax] DCL Syntax

[Dave Froble]

On 8/30/2018 7:30 AM, John Reagan wrote:
> On Thursday, August 30, 2018 at 7:21:44 AM UTC-4, Craig A. Berry wrote:
>> On 8/29/18 9:04 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>> On 8/29/2018 9:54 PM, Craig A. Berry wrote:
>>>> On 8/29/18 5:46 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>>>> On 8/29/2018 2:45 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>>>>> On 08/29/2018 02:33 PM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>>>>>>> On 2018-08-28 18:54:54 +0000, John Reagan said:
>>>>>>>> You need the /TREE qualifier for DELETE to match the behavior.
>>>>>>>> (Personally, it should have been /RECURSIVE and not /TREE but
>>>>>>>> nobody asked me)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> The use of /TREE was likely related to one of the more common tools
>>>>>>> used for this purpose: DELTREE.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> And yes, /RECURSIVE would likely have been a better and more
>>>>>>> obvious choice here.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> You and the other folks at VSI are also in a position to do
>>>>>>> something about that and about other DCL syntax, too.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Yes, but considering the potential impact on existing already
>>>>>> written procedures is it worth making little cosmetic changes
>>>>>> like this when everyone (even me) understood the old meaning?
>>>>>
>>>>> Add /RECURSIVE, document /RECURSIVE, remove /TREE from documentation
>>>>> but keep /TREE working.
>>>>
>>>> No one with any sense would use anything except MCR DFU DELETE/TREE for
>>>> this purpose; it's massively faster than the DELETE/TREE implemented by
>>>> HPE. Most likely the prior art of DFU and the rmtree() functions in
>>>> Perl, Python and elsewhere influenced the choice of the /TREE qualifier.
>>>> I for one would never have imagined or guessed /RECURSIVE, but I might
>>>> have eventually read the documentation and eventually remembered that on
>>>> VMS it's different just for the sake of being different. And then gone
>>>> back to using the better, non-standard tools.
>>>
>>> Given that *nix uses -r or -R then I guess a few people would have
>>> guessed.
>>
>> But where *nix uses -r or -R, VMS just uses recursive filespecs. Where
>> you would say grep -R on Unix, you don't say SEARCH/RECURSIVE on VMS --
>> just SEARCH [...].
>
> Then why not just DELETE [...]*.*;*
>

Ayep.  And Up arrow and return until "file not found" ....