[Info-vax] What is your favorite tool lo look at open batch log files? I use a vested ICR LIST from 1988 (binary translated from VAX to Alpha)

[Jon Pinkley]

On Sunday, November 8, 2020 at 2:32:26 AM UTC-5, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
> Den 2020-11-08 kl. 08:04, skrev Jon Pinkley:
>
> TYPE. With /TAIL, if that works.

TYPE/PAGE works well for small log files, and TAIL is good to see the end of the file, but neither of those allow you to search within the file if you are looking for a specific string.  And if you are debugging a problem you often need to be able to search forward and backward.

For example you may have a runaway job caused by a failure that is then causing your job to loop, and tail can quickly show you that.  But it isn't very good in letting you know when it started.

All this assumes verification is turned on, or there are useful messages being written to sys$output by the batch job.

I had a co-worker that would make a copy of the log file with convert/share and then use an editor to view/debug, which is ok for small log files, but doesn't scale well with large log files.

I am not sure when I started using LIST, probably shortly after it was on the DECUS tapes in 1982, and once I learned the syntax and commands,  which at the time was quite foreign to me, I was hooked, and never found anything else that made me want to switch.  (Like Teco to Andy Goldstein)

There's an SMG based file viewer (LOOK) by Serge Kovalyovon and enhancements by Patrick Ellis on Hunter Goatley's FILESERV and mirrors, and it is quite good.  It is more like using an editor, with single key commands for navigation.  It is definitely easier to learn than list.  And much better than type/page

I find myself using it more frequently for simple things, and it is more likely to be accepted by new users than LIST is.  (EVE vs Teco, nano vs vim)

http://vms.process.com/ftp/vms-freeware/fileserv/look.zip

But I still prefer LIST for most things, because I have learned how to use it. On OpenVMS I still prefer EDT over EVE, so that shows how people tend to like what they first learned.  List can also be used like search to extract records, or a column range from a file, although in general, gawk or perl would probably be better choices at this time.  One VMS specific thing that LIST can do is open an indexed file and read in index key order, not something I use often, but I have used it.

Here's a link to the ICR LIST documentation:
https://www.digiater.nl/openvms/decus/vax82b/icr/list/list.doc  (runoff text output, not word document)
https://www.digiater.nl/openvms/decus/vax82b/icr/list/list.rno  runoff source