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

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 1/20/22 9:19 AM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> 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 

bash is Linux, not Unix.  Yet another case of NIH because there
were already shells available with all the features and abilities
of bash.

>                                                     but Perl
> and Python are not *nix specific.

Both were originally developed in the Unix environment.  Use in any
other environment is an afterthought.

> 
> 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

Maybe not bash, but other shells which were ideal for both
interactive use and scripting were.

> - 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
> 

bill