Copyright 1993-2016 by Kevin G. Barkes

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DCL DIALOGUE

Originally published January, 1993

DCL's Greatest Hits

By Kevin G. Barkes

A few years ago when my son was reading Boy's Life instead
of grabbing my copy of Rolling Stone, I noticed an
interesting phenomenon.

Upon receipt of the magazine, Doug would immediately turn to
the joke page and regale me with the gems located thereon.
Frequently, to his consternation, he would discover I
already knew the punch lines.

That's because I remember reading the same jokes when I
subscribed to BL in the 60s. I also noticed, during Doug's
MAD Magazine phase, that they recycled material from time to
time as well.

I really don't like rehashing subjects I've previously
discussed in this column. But the readership does churn a
bit, and a respectable number of new VMS users pick up this
magazine for the first time each month.

This point was driven home to me when last week I received
three reader inquiries asking about the undocumented DCL
CHECKSUM command, and if I new it existed. "Of course I know
about it," I harummphed. "It appeared in my column."

"When?" one of the callers asked. A quick search through my
files noted a reference to CHECKSUM in a fall 1988 column.
There was silence on the other end of the phone. "In 1988 I
was a sophomore in high school," the somewhat sarcastic
voice said.

Sigh. Oldtimers, bear with me. Here's a condensed collection
of "greatest hits", the most frequently asked questions/
requested code from the past seven years or so. This should
cover it until the millenium:

+ Even if you're not on a cluster, MONITOR CLUSTER will
provide a nifty display of your system's cpu, memory, lock
and disk load.

+ A handy procedure that uses the terminal buffer size to
toggle between 80 and 132 column mode:

$ PTERM  = F$GETDVI(F$GETJPI(F$GETJPI("","MASTER_PID"),-
  "TERMINAL"),"TT_PHYDEVNAM")
$ OLD   = F$GETDVI(PTERM,"DEVBUFSIZ")
$ NEW = 80
$ IF OLD .EQ. 80 THEN NEW = 132
$ IF P1 .NE. 0 THEN NEW = P1
$ SET TERM/WIDTH='NEW' 'PTERM' 

+ Rather than killing off a process that's hogging the
system, you can put it in suspended animation. Use SET
PROCESS/SUSPEND to put the process to sleep and SET
PROCESS/RESUME to restart it when the slow system
bellyachers go home.

+ Nifty code to execute commands on remote notes. The
procedure must be present in the user's SYS$LOGIN directory
on all nodes, and it assumes that proxy logins have been set
up so that a username and password need not be specified in
the procedure:

$ IF F$MODE() .EQS. "NETWORK" THEN GOTO REMOTE
$ LOCAL: OPEN/READ/WRITE RMT$NET 'P1'"TASK=RMTCMD"
$ WRITE RMT$NET P2
$ RDREPLY: READ/END_OF_FILE=CLSRMT RMT$NET RESULTS
$ WRITE SYS$OUTPUT RESULTS
$ GOTO RDREPLY
$ REMOTE: OPEN/READ/WRITE RMT$NET SYS$NET
$ READ/END_OF_FILE=NOCMD RMT$NET COMMAND
$ IF COMMAND .EQS. "" THEN GOTO NOCMD
$ DEFINE/USER SYS$OUTPUT RMT$NET
$ 'COMMAND'
$ GOTO CLSRMT
$ NOCMD: WRITE RMS$NET "NO COMMAND RECEIVED - RMTCMD"
$ CLSRMT: CLOSE RMT$NET
$ EXIT

+ If you're using DECwindows, change the value on the line
sm.pointer_shape: to -142 in your DECW$SM_GENERAL.DAT file.
This transforms the pointer to an outline of the Starship
Enterprise.

+ File specification shorthand: you can access prior
versions of files by specifying a version offset instead of
an explicit version number. For example, EDIT FILE.DAT;-1
will edit the file one version number lower than the highest
available version number. The version number ;0 specifies
the highest version number of a file and ;-0 specifies the
lowest. For that matter, the ;0 itself is optional. So, if
you wanted to delete the latest version of a file, keeping
prior versions intact, and you didn't know the actual
version number, you could enter DELETE FILE.DAT; or DELETE
FILE.DAT.

+ You can replace DEC's name on the flag page of your
printouts by adding the following line to your system
startup procedure: $ DEFINE/SYSTEM/EXEC PSM$ANNOUNCE
"Replacement text"

+ And, finally, CHECKSUM. CHECKSUM (filename) calculates the
checksum of a file and places it in the symbol
CHECKSUM$CHECKSUM. Great for home-grown security
applications. CHECKSUM/IMAGE returns additional information
about .EXE files.

*********************

Mass vs. Energy

After two months of sitting under my desk, I finally
installed Pathworks on my VAXstation and PC. I put it off
because, frankly, I was spooked by the 20 or so manuals
which came with the software. Barkes' Rule: The degree of
software installation difficulty is directly proportional to
the volume of the documentation, or, watch your butt when
the doc weighs more than the iron. Still, it went in rather
easily and even works quite well with Windows 3.1. DEC could
do us all a favor, though, and give us an eight page booklet
with "bare bones" .COM and .BAT files to put up a "minimum"
installation on which to build more elaborate
configurations. One side bonus: STARTNET.BAT is now my
teaching example for spaghetti code.

Strange arrivals of the month: Chris Chiesa's sixel graphics
Jolt Cola logo and an anonymously submitted .GIF file
showing the bridge of the Enterprise with a VAX stuck in a
corner. I guess cabin fever knows no season...

**********************

Kevin G. Barkes is an independent consultant who wrote this
column prior to the presidential election but couldn't pass
up the one-liner: "Saying (candidate of your choice) is our
best hope is like saying Moe was the smart Stooge." Kevin
lurks on comp.os.vms and can be reached at kgbarkes@gmail.com