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

[Dave Froble]

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 ....

:-)

-- 
David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc.      E-Mail: davef at tsoft-inc.com
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