[Info-vax] The best VMS features, was: Re: openvms renaming file

[Simon Clubley]

On 2018-05-28, Stephen Hoffman <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote:
>
> Logical names?  Definitely not.  Logical names are a disaster, in most 
> of the ways that they're commonly used.   There are better ways to do 
> most or all of what logical names are used for, too.  Just not as 
> easily on OpenVMS, unfortunately.   They're complete dreck when used 
> for app settings, flags and related configuration data.
>

I know they have been heavily abused by the C RTL people (for example)
but the idea was good.

> I used to think that logical names were pretty handy.  Then I started 
> working with property lists (YAML or otherwise) and with settings that 
> were integrated into the image activator, and with file links.  Vastly 
> preferable, far more capable, and lacking the out-of-band and 
> collision-avoidance-by-convention issues of logical names.   All of 
> which OpenVMS lacks.
>

How well do those things work in a shared everything cluster environment ?

>
> Privileges aren't 
> particularly tied to the access modes, beyond the memory management 
> controls being the foundation for all security.
>

For one obvious example, what exactly is the point of having both
CMEXEC and CMKRNL privileges on VMS, given how VMS is designed ?

Because of that design, CMEXEC is completely and utterly redundant
and is just artifical complexity (and a false sense of security).

>
> Lexical functions are what you get when your command output can't be 
> processed directly as text, nor as objects.
>

I wouldn't mind objects from within DCL one little bit. :-)

However, for text processing (as opposed to objects), lexical functions
are better in some ways because they decouple what is being requested
from how it is being requested, which means you don't have to keep the
output format from various commands fixed for all time.

It's a pity they are so limited on VMS.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
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