[Info-vax] Suggestion: Enhance DCL to support proper escape quoting.

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 1/19/2022 9:37 PM, Chris Townley wrote:
> On 20/01/2022 02:14, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 1/19/2022 5:26 PM, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
>>> Den 2022-01-19 kl. 19:49, skrev Arne Vajhøj:
>>>> On 1/19/2022 1:33 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>>>> This suggestion follows the current discussion about using special
>>>>> characters as data, which shows just how horrible DCL is when it
>>>>> comes to using special characters as data in a command line.
>>>>>
>>>>> How difficult would it be to alter DCL to add modern style quoting
>>>>> of reserved characters ?
>>>>>
>>>>> In bash, escaping a special character is simple - you just add a
>>>>> backslash in front of the special character, so ' would become \'
>>>>> instead. I think that's vastly better and cleaner than how it is
>>>>> done in DCL.
>>>>>
>>>>> What do you think ?
>>>>
>>>> DCL is DCL and bash is bash.
>>>>
>>>> Generally making \ an escape character in DCL will break some
>>>> existing code.
>>>>
>>>> And I am not too keen on SET DCL/ESC=ENABLE.
>>>>
>>>> Why not just say that those that need something more advanced than
>>>> DCL use just that.
>>>>
>>>> They can get bash via GNV.
>>>>
>>>> They can also use Python, Perl etc..
>>
>>> My take is that VSI should focus on those things that really make
>>> a difference for the *majority* uf the VMS users, and in particular
>>> for the owners of the companies where these systems are used.
>>>
>>> In our environment (and I guess that is valid for most current VMS
>>> environments), out of the approx 200 "users" there are probably 3-4
>>> that actually "use" DCL. So what group should we focus on?
>>>
>>> How many of the end-users of system running VMS realy cares about DCL?
>>>
>>> Why should we focus on things that such a minority of the VMS
>>> users really "use" in their daily work?
>>>
>>> I'd say that any additions to DCL that you can think of, does
>>> nothing to the general acceptance of VMS as a platform.
>>
>> Very few VMS users work at the DCL prompt today.
>>
>> But I think a lot of VMS "users" are benefitting from
>> scripts running on VMS.
>>
>> So good script capabilities does matter.
>>
>> But I don't think huge updates to DCL is the way forward
>> for scripting.
>>
>> Existing DCL needs to continue to work as it has for 10-20-30-40 years.
>>
>> New stuff can be written in something else.
> 
> It is not as if it is difficult to install various 'nix utilities. I 
> have quite a few, although I probably only use a a few of them - grep 
> being one of them

*nix or general - bash and tools are obvious *nix but Perl
and Python are not *nix specific.

DCL is a good interactive command language and not as good
a scripting language.

If DEC 35 years ago had decided to enhance DCL to make
it a great scripting language then it would have made sense:
- DEC had money
- bash/Perl/Python did not exist yet
- smaller DCL code base and the people that wrote the DCL were
   still around

But the world are different today:
- VSI is a small company that need to prioritize resources
- bash/Perl/Python exist, are maintained by other and all
   the VMS world need to do is to make sure they also run on VMS
- larger DCL code base and some places there may no longer be
   the skills available to update if breaking changes are introduced

Arne