[Info-vax] Local Versus Global Command Options

[Mark Berryman]

On 2/17/25 2:49 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Feb 2025 12:02:37 -0700, Mark Berryman wrote:
> 
>> On 2/16/25 5:43 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>
>>> Consider what happens: if you pass unquoted text to program X, DCL
>>> converts it to uppercase, and I think also normalizes multiple spaces
>>> to a single space. If you don’t want the text to be uppercased or
>>> space- normalized, you put it in pairs of double quotes. But then these
>>> double quotes also get passed as part of the command line. So the
>>> receiving program has to do some non-trivial parsing just to get simple
>>> literal text via the command line.
>>
>> So, so, so very wrong.  You are *way* behind the times.
>>
>> I *never* have to quote arguments when using programs that still use
>> *nix syntax on VMS.  My arguments' case is never changed.
> 
> Prove it. It seems to me what you are claiming would break backward
> compatibility with the way VMS used to work.
> 
>> $ gs -q -P- -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sstdout=%stderr
>> -sOutputFile=<something>.pdf <something>.ps

I'm pretty sure this just did.

And no, no breakage.  Each user on each VMS system can choose how they 
want to things to work.  I could easily set things up to work the way 
you think they should work but that would be so '90s; pretty much what 
the poster from VAX/VMS showed.  I prefer to operate in the 21st century 
and take advantage of what VMS offers today, something of which you have 
proven yourself completely ignorant.

 > .
 > .
> .
> Can you show us a simple C program that just prints out its command
> arguments, and how it responds to some sample command lines?

Easily.

$ type proof.c
#include <stdio.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
     for (int i=1; i<argc; i++)
         printf("%s\n", argv[i]);
}


$ mcr []proof These Are The Arguments
These
Are
The
Arguments

$ mcr []proof These Are The "Arguments"
These
Are
The
Arguments


Now, please crawl back into your hole.  Trolls don't do well in sunlight 
and your extreme ... obtuseness ... is showing.

Everyone else: Yes, I've once again been forced to face the fact that 
you can't fix stupid.  I won't be responding anymore.

Mark Berryman