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

[Craig A. Berry]

On Tuesday, May 29, 2018 at 8:00:57 AM UTC-5, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2018-05-28 05:56:56 +0000, Simon Clubley said:
> 
> > 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.
> 
> For pretty much anything beyond devices and paths — and there are 
> equivalent or variously better alternatives there — the use of logical 
> names for configurations and settings is a bad idea.  

Except that the 255-byte limit on equivalence names can make them problematic for paths these days, much less HTTP session variables and other things they have been used for.  But being able to use rooted logicals as rough equivalents of mount points is a feature that I miss elsewhere.