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

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 1/20/22 11:26 AM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 1/20/2022 10:25 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>> 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:
>>>>> 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.
> 
> Bash was developed on Unix (first version of bash came out
> 2 years before the first version of Linux). It became
> popular on Linux and was later adopted by various Unixes.
> 
> I think *nix is a good term to describe it.

Sadly, I don't think any Linux users (or even most Linux
developers) have ever read any of the books like "Software
Tools" or "The Unix Programming Environment".  It may look
somewhat like Unix, but it is lacking in the underlying
paradigm.

> 
>>                           Yet another case of NIH because there
>> were already shells available with all the features and abilities
>> of bash.
> 
> People seems to prefer bash over the other available shells.

Some do.  Mostly Linux users.

> 
>>
>>>                                                     but Perl
>>> and Python are not *nix specific.
>>
>> Both were originally developed in the Unix environment.  Use in any
>> other environment is an afterthought.
> 
> They were developed on Unix but I don't think calling usage on
> other platforms an afterthought is proper description.
> 
> When Guido Rossum released the first public version of Python he wrote:
> 
> <quote>
> It runs on most modern versions of UNIX, on the Mac, and
> I wouldn't be surprised if it ran on MS-DOS unchanged.  I developed it
> mostly on an SGI IRIS workstation (using IRIX 3.1 and 3.2) and on the
> Mac, but have tested it also on SunOS (4.1) and BSD 4.3 (tahoe).
> </quote>
> 
> so he did test on Mac from day 1 (and Mac at that time was not *nix).
> 
> When Larry Wall released the first public version of Perl the build
> configuration included:
> 
> <quote>
> /* EUNICE:
>   *    This symbol, if defined, indicates that the program is being 
> compiled
>   *    under the EUNICE package under VMS.  The program will need to handle
>   *    things like files that don't go away the first time you unlink them,
>   *    due to version numbering.  It will also need to compensate for lack
>   *    of a respectable link() command.
>   */
> /* VMS:
>   *    This symbol, if defined, indicates that the program is running under
>   *    VMS.  It is currently only set in conjunction with the EUNICE 
> symbol.
>   */
> </quote>
> 
> so definitely Unix centric but VMS aware.

EUNICE?  That's Unix running on top of VMS. :-)
Can it be compiled and run if you set the VMS flag?

> 
>>> 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.
> 
> sh, csh, ksh etc. was around.
> 
> But no more ideal than very few use them today.

Funny, that.  NetBSD, OpenBSD and FreeBSD don't ship with bash
installed and not offered as one of the default shells in the
/etc/shells file.  I don't even use bash on Linux.  I haven't
used Solaris in quite some time but the last time I did it
was the same. I have used Unix since Version7 and have never
used a version of Unix that shipped with bash.  Only Linux
does that.

bill