[Info-vax] Text processing on VMS

[Craig A. Berry]

On 10/13/24 10:04 AM, David Meyer wrote:
> I've got a text file with data that I want to select lines matching
> certain character strings, then extract string values from the selected
> lines by character position. On Unix, I would use awk or Perl. Does VMS
> have a similar tool, should I use my favorite programming language and
> call the STR$ RTL, can I write a TPU script to do this, or should I
> transfer the file to a Unix box and user awk or Perl? ;)

Perl is available.  It's part of the base install on OpenVMS x86.  For
Alpha and Itanium you can get an installer at:

https://vmssoftware.com/products/perl/

Python is also available.  While what you want can be done with DCL or
TPU, that's generally more pain for less gain.