[Info-vax] VMS on Raspberry Pi 5

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 11/14/2023 3:10 PM, Martin Gregorie wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Nov 2023 13:41:27 -0500, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 11/14/2023 1:21 PM, Martin Gregorie wrote:
>>> VMS seemed to have a few portmanteau commands where the other OSen had
>>> a host of single function commands. For instance, to access the
>>> equivalents of the Unix commands rm, cp, less and ls under VAX/VMS you
>>> first logged in (same as unix) but then you had to start a package
>>> (sorry, but I don't remember its name) to access its own command line
>>> and then run  the UNIX- like comands.
>>>
>>> That's stuck with me because no UNIX or Linux system works that way.and
>>> logging to every other OS I've used has given immediate access to a
>>> command line.
>>
>> Now I am confused.
>>
>> If you login to VMS you have immediate access to DCL commands.
>>
> Its been a very long time (1990 or thereabouts and thats the only VAX-
> based project I was on, but I distinctly remember that login gave you a
> command line, but if you wanted to, say, get rid of old versions of a few
> files you had to start a a portmanteau program that gave access to all the
> file and directory manipulation functions via its own command line, and
> once you'd done all that, toy exited from that program to get back to the
> command line where logging in had left you.

Sounds like a very custom setup. Back in the days various
captive scripts existed to limit users exposure to full DCL.
But most offered a menu system. And if not fully captive DCL
access was a menu item.

Usually you just login and issue DCL commands.

If you want to get rid of old versions of foobar.txt:

$ purge foobar.txt

>         I was just a database developer on the VAX system, so had no
> knowledge of much about it apart from what I needed to write COBOL and
> interface that with DEC's relational database system.


VMS + Cobol + Rdb was a common combo - it is till used today.

Did you use embedded SQL or Rdb module feature?

Arne