[Info-vax] DCL Syntax

[osuvman50 at gmail.com]

On Thursday, August 30, 2018 at 7:30:24 AM UTC-4, 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 [...]*.*;*

I use DELETE [...]*.*;*,;,;,;,; to take care of multiple levels at once (directory files are always version 1 so you don't need to wildcard the secondary passes).

The biggest hassle deleting directories is that CREATE/DIRECTORY by default sets the protection to no delete access.  DELETE/TREE seems to ignore that.