[Info-vax] Backup API mailbox oddity

[osuvman50 at gmail.com]

On Thursday, January 11, 2018 at 4:24:53 PM UTC-5, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2018-01-11 20:55:19 +0000, osuvman50 at gmail.com said:
> 
> > On Thursday, January 11, 2018 at 11:57:34 AM UTC-5, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> >> Based on what I see here, I'd just spawn BACKUP directly and capture 
> >> errors via the termination mailbox.
> > If I use system() to spawn the command, it still requires a preceding 
> > EOF. If I use LIB$SPAWN(), it requires 2 EOFs before sending the 
> > filenames.  If I use LIB$SPAWN but make the mailbox the spawn's 
> > SYS$INPUT and specify sys$input/inputfiles on the backup command, it 
> > also requires 2 spurious EOFs.
> 
> If it wasn't entirely clear, I was suggesting spawning the BACKUP 
> command directly, not the tool that calls the BACKUP API...
> 

I always took that as your meaning, e.g.:

    sprintf ( command, "BACKUP/log %s/input_files %s", mailbox_name, dst->path);
    status = system ( command );

is more or less a drop in replacement for the API call, including the extra EOF
requirement.  The event callbacks with the API let you capture more detail than
just final completion status.