[Info-vax] VMS enhancement suggestion: Add a "read regardless" file open option.

[Jan-Erik Söderholm]

Den 2020-11-10 kl. 19:29, skrev Simon Clubley:
> On 2020-11-10, geze... at rlgsc.com <gezelter at rlgsc.com> wrote:
>>
>> Last time I checked, they were.  The frequency of writing can be reset using the SET OUTPUT_RATE command (default is one minute interval).
>>
> 
> Before everyone thinks that log files are the only thing you might
> want to look at in this way,...

And besides, what is the definition of a "log file" here?

Batch log files created by the quemgr for a job running on a batch
queue is just one sort of "log file". And those files are readable
(at least by TYPE) just fine.

I do not expect to be able to open a batch log file from a *running*
batch job in EDT, why would one want to do that? And it is simple to
do a TYPE/OUTPUT=<some file> and open *that* file in EDT.

If you want to know how far the job has come, a type of the batch
log is in most cases just fine.

Then there are "log files" that can we written by programming code
in some application. And that can have any number of quirks I guess,
depending on how that log file was opened.

For our main detached (Cobol) applications we have a C-routine that
we call with one log file entry (line) as one of the parameters, and
that file is written in a way so that it is always TYPE'able. The
detached process can also have a SYS$OUTPUT file, but that is not
readable until the process exits. That is why this seprate log file
was created. So we try to not DISPLAY anything from the Cobol source
but call this C logging routine instead.


> don't forget that there are a good range
> of sequential files you might want to look at while they are being
> created by some program that takes a long time to run.

If it takes a "long time" to run, I expect it to run in batch. And in
that case, the appliation can print a progress message to sys$output
that can we watched by TYPE'ing the normal batch log file.

10.000 records written to output file...
20.000 records written to output file...
30.000 records written to output file...
...
...


> 
> Setting a log output rate will not help you in that case and neither
> will changing the source code if you don't have access to the source
> code for the program.
> 
> Simon.
>