[Info-vax] STARTREK.BCK Restore - How?

[Simon Clubley]

On 2019-06-12, Tom Wade <nospam at void.blackhole.mx> wrote:
> On 2019-05-11 19:32, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>> I've occasionally wondered whether making "-V" the default on OpenVMS 
>> would be worth the hassles that'd cause, too.
>
> Yes, I agree, but it should be /VMS not "-V".  I find it constantly 
> irritating that programs are 'ported' onto VMS without providing decent 
> DCL parsing, and forcing us to use Unix style 
> single-character-hieroglyphics for arguments.
>

It has been multiple decades since you were forced to use single characters
to supply options under Unix. Now you have the best of both worlds; in many
programs you can either use a single character for common options (if you
wish) or a longer option name for all options.

Take a look at the following for an example of what a modern Unix style
command line looks like:

https://clang.llvm.org/docs/ClangCommandLineReference.html

All options have meaningful names and some common ones also have single
character names as an alternative as well.

VSI are writing a mapping module to map the existing DCL qualifiers and
options to the clang options, but there's a reason why there's no point
in VSI going to the effort of making up a specific (and artificial) DCL
qualifier for every single option on that list.

If you need to go deeper that what the current DCL qualifiers and options
provide, it is extremely viable (and preferred) to just use the existing
clang options directly so you are using the same option names as everyone
else uses.

When we are talking about software which is used on multiple operating
systems, this whole "give everything a DCL qualifier" idea is something
that makes things different for the sake of being different without no
real benefits and actually makes things worse.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world