[Info-vax] A SYS$ version of F$EDIT

[VAXman- at SendSpamHere.ORG]

In article <qcsl35$8us$1 at dont-email.me>, Dave Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> writes:
>On 5/31/2019 7:41 PM, seasoned_geek wrote:
>> Admittedly it has been a long time since I wrote this book
>>
>> http://www.theminimumyouneedtoknow.com/app_book.html
>>
>> and it's Friday after a few Chardonnays, but given OpenVMS is being ported to x86 (and my feelings are widely known on that) the one thing they should add to make C not suck so much on the platform is a SYS$EDIT which mirrors F$EDIT in functionality.
>>
>>
>> Just my 0.0002 cents worth.
>>
>
>Well, C is going to suck, whatever ....
>
>So, what does F$EDIT do?
>
>   F$EDIT
>
>        Edits the character string based on the edits specified in the
>        edit-list argument.
>
>        Format
>
>          F$EDIT(string, edit-list)
>
>       edit-list
>
>          Specifies a character string containing one or more of the
>          following keywords which specify the types of edits to be made
>          to the string:
>
>          Edit          Action
>
>          COLLAPSE      Removes all spaces or tabs.
>          COMPRESS      Replaces multiple spaces or tabs with a single
>                        space.
>          LOWERCASE     Changes all uppercase characters to lowercase.
>          TRIM          Removes leading and trailing spaces or tabs.
>          UNCOMMENT     Removes comments.
>          UPCASE        Changes all lowercase characters to uppercase.
>
>Ok, useful.  But, why don't we take a look at Basic's EDIT$() function?
>
>EDIT$
>
>    The  EDIT$  function  performs  one  or  more  string  editing 
>functions,
>    depending on the value of its integer argument.
>
>    Example
>
>    New_string$ = EDIT$(Old_string$, 48%)
>
>           str-var = EDIT$(str-exp, int-exp)
>
>      Values   Effect
>
>      1%       Trim parity bits
>      2%       Discard all spaces and tabs
>      4%       Discard characters: CR, LF, FF, ESC, RUBOUT, and NULL
>      8%       Discard leading spaces and tabs
>      16%      Reduce spaces and tabs to one space
>      32%      Convert lowercase to uppercase
>      64%      Convert [ to ( and ] to )
>      128%     Discard trailing spaces and tabs
>      256%     Do not alter characters inside quotes
>
>Guess Basic doesn't like converting to lowercase.  Can't have everything.
>
>So, it seems mostly everything is already in VMS, one just needs to be 
>able to invoke it.
>
>Having fun ....
>
>:-)

The functions performed by F$edit can be had, albeit perhaps not in a single
call, via STR$ RTL functions.>

RTFM. ;)

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