[Info-vax] DCL and scripting

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 12/11/2018 11:30 AM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2018-12-11 13:19:47 +0000, Jairo Alves said:
> 
>> When I teach simple DCL to my students they always complain about the 
>> dollar sign convention. They find it kinda old-fashioned.
> 
> I usually conceptually equate the leading $ to a semicolon in C or C++, 
> among those folks that have learned and programmed in those and similar 
> languages; to a source code line delimiter.  There are some syntactic 
> differences there, of course.
> 
> Pragmatically, DCL is very much syntactic aggregations and accretions 
> perched atop a 1970s-era design, itself inspired by interactive BASIC 
> shells and with a dollop or two of FORTRAN syntax that was found in a 
> jar in the back of a Tewksbury 'fridge.  FORTRAN 77 was bleeding edge, 
> when DCL was designed.  In short, your students are quite correct.  DCL 
> itself is quite old-fashioned, and variously also quite limited.

Free format and semicolon separation is certainly common today.

But there are still languages including new and popular ones with
more fixed formats.

I do not see the lack of free format as a major problem for
DCL (there are many other real problems).

I think I could explain what:

$ cc /obj=z sys$input
#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
     printf("Hello world!\n");
     return 0;
}
$
$ link z
$ run z
$ exit

does to a non-VMS person without the person screaming weird.

I am not sure that I could do the same for:

$ cc /obj=z sys$input
$ deck/dollars="****THE END****"
#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
     printf("Hello world!\n");
     return 0;
}
****THE END****
$ link z
$ run z
$ exit

though.

:-)

Arne