si...@uggs.demon.co.uk (Simon Foster),
In a message on Tue, 23 Sep 1997 22:06:19 GMT, wrote :
SF> Martin Hebrank <hel...@devel.nacs.net> wrote:
SF>
SF> >Simon Foster <si...@uggs.demon.co.uk> wrote:
SF> >
SF> >: Does anyone know if there is a shell available for Linux that looks
SF> >: like the DEC VMS DCL command language. If not, there should be!
SF> >
SF> >Gah. . .I thought there was I reason I left VMS. . . :->
SF> >
SF>
SF> Could we at least make any replies in English ?? I'm not saying that
SF> VMS is better than Unix by the way. I am really interested more for
SF> nostalgic reasons - I have used VMS a lot and I thought it would be
SF> fun. I have the impression that VMS is dying as an operating system -
SF> is this true?
Yes and no. "Interesting" parts of VMS live on in Digital UNIX 4.0
(Alphas). Things like having one file system across multiple physical
disk (no I don't mean the normal UNIX things like mounting a one disk
under another (i.e. /dev/sda1 => /usr, /dev/sdb2 => /usr/local), I mean
/usr being partly on /dev/rz1a and partly on /dev/rz2b, but being one
logical file system). And all sorts of interesting security features in
the user authorization database (no, don't call it "/etc/passwd", it
isn't). Disk quotas for groups as well as users. Stuff like that.
If you just want the DCL commands, and don't really care about actual
DCL functions, there is nothing stopping you from having a .cshrc file
with something like the following in it:
alias dir 'ls -FC'
alias ren mv
alias del rm
alias type cat
alias eoj exit
alias set_host telnet
alias set_default cd
alias compare diff
# (I am not sure this will work -- I am not *still* not a super csh hacker.)
alias purge 'rm -f *~ #*#'
and so on. (Yes, I've used DCL too.)
Also, a UNIX shell is a very simple sort of program -- much simpler
than a VMS CLI program. I suppose if you get totally bored, you could
put together a YACC parser for DCL syntax fairly easily, at least for
the basic sorts of commands and to handle some of DCL abbreviation games
(dir, dire, direc, direct, directo, director, directory => ls, etc.)
--
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