Of course... a few more VMS questions... ;-)

From: allisonp <allisonp_at_world.std.com>
Date: Wed Apr 26 20:06:04 2000

>Okay... I'm getting accustomed to the VMS directory structure, and have


Dir dka0:[000000...] ;)

>even installed a few apps from one of the CD's, which (of course) failed
>the tail-end of the install due to my not having a DECUS membership number
>yet (pending) or VMS hobbyist license (also pending, and will get right
>after DECUS gets back to me.)


Not failed, just not licensed.

>Now, will that license be good for anything I install as far as software,
>or will I have to get a license for every type of program I want to run? (I
>sincerely hope the former... ;-) Mainly, I just want to do some C and
>BASIC programming for now.


that license covers a set of programs that happens to be on the hobbiest CD
including C, Pascal, TCP/IP networking and a bunch of other things.

VMS itself includes a fairly nice editor (TPU) and a raft of goodies. With
DCL
(command language{script}) you can do most anything.

>And one other question which I've not found or figured out myself... How do
>I get a directory listing of *just the subdirectories*? I've figured out
>how to search for a particular filename or extension recursively thru the
>subdirectories, but what's the VMS equivalent to DOS's dir /ad or linux's
>ls -lAF|grep '/$' ???


{there are lexical functions in DCL with would do things that grep can do}

Dir *.dir works! Directories have the extension .DIR.

Dir [...]foo*.asm Will find anything in the current or subordinate
directories
                               that match that pattern.

Dir [-]FOO??.A?M A ? is a single character wild card and the "[-]" says
search
the directory level above the current one.

VMS directories start at [000000] and decend from there. so dir
dka300:[000000]
will get you the top level directoy of the SCSI drive on bus A with ID 3.

Help dir will get you info.

VMS is known for the rather rich set of operators that modify the basic
action.
My favorite device modifier...

  Set device=flamethrower/temperature:plasma

You get the picture.

I have a list of DCL functions, ailiases, and logicals that I use to make
things friendlier.

Most often used are:

    UP same as SET DEF [-] {cd ..}
   DO*WN decend to either list of availabile directories or create a new
one.
                    {only one level down from current} same asCD FOO or
mkdir

At some point once I have a web page going I should make the DCL scripts
I use frequently available as they can be handy.

No law says you can't create a ailias to do exactly what MKDIR, CD, REMDIR
and friends do in the unix world. Implement them in DCL and insert the
code/defs
in the login.com file.

Hint, system is a dangerous account like root. Create a user account with
some privs as a safety net. Also every account should have a login.com
which is like a DOS autoexec.bat though DCL is more powerful.

Allison
Received on Wed Apr 26 2000 - 20:06:04 BST