[Info-vax] Local Versus Global Command Options

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

On Sat, 15 Feb 2025 12:22:59 -0700, Mark Berryman wrote:

> So, IMHO, DCL is superior in this regard.

Unfortunately, no. The fundamental problem with DEC OSes (and this 
includes Windows) is that the command line is passed to the program as a 
single string buffer. On *nix systems, it is passed as an array of 
strings.

You should be familiar with the well-known problem of one program invoking 
another with a command that might include characters with special meanings 
to a shell. On a *nix system, there is a simple way to avoid those special 
meanings: the first program invokes the second program directly, without 
going through a shell.

Nowadays, there is even a simple library call to do this
<https://manpages.debian.org/posix_spawn(3)>.

This is not so easy to do with a DEC-style command line.