[Info-vax] Command Line Versus Command Line

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 5/23/2024 6:36 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Thu, 23 May 2024 15:05:42 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 5/23/2024 12:16 AM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>> VMS really wants you to use a DCL-style syntax for your command lines.
>>> It does weird things like uppercasing text in the command buffer,
>>> except for parts in quotes, which are left as-is, but then the quotes
>>> are also left in place, so command-line parsers have to worry about
>>> dealing with text that might or might not be quoted.
>>
>> That is an oversimplified view on a complex issue.
> 
> What you have done is rely on library routines to impose a commonality on
> the underlying raw command buffer contents.

Then you have not read it careful enough. The point is that different
approaches have different behavior - the exact opposite of impose
commonality.

>                                               And those library routines are
> CLI-specific,

I doubt that. I would expect any proper CLI on VMS to work with them

>               as I recall; notwithstanding their “cli$” name prefix, they
> are part of DCL itself.

No. They are utility routines.

And they reside in STARLET.OLB module CLI$INTERFACE.

> Like I said, on *nix systems, there is no automatic assumption that you
> need the intervention of a CLI/shell just for one program to execute
> another.

On *nix there is little difference between a shell and another
program. Huge difference on VMS.

Arne