Copyright 1994-2016 by Kevin G. Barkes

All rights reserved. This article may be duplicated or
redistributed provided no alterations of any kind are
made to this file.

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DCL DIALOGUE

Originally published August, 1994

Ned Ludd Had The Right Idea

By Kevin G. Barkes

Ned Ludd, the unofficial village idiot of Leicestershire,
England in the late eighteenth century, secured his place in
the history books by taking a large blunt instrument to some
new mechanical stocking frames owned by his employer. His
actions inspired a group of workers who, from 1811 to 1816,
called themselves Luddites and tried to stop the Industrial
Revolution by smashing new labor-saving textile equipment.

I have a lot of empathy for Ned and his compatriots. I turn
40 next month, and it's been almost exactly 10 years since I
started my computer consulting business. Since then, there
has never been a time when my livelihood was not threatened
by some new up and coming operating system, architecture
replacement, or software upgrade that could make my skills
useless and/or unmarketable.

Every week, the knot in my stomach tightens when the lastest
bunch of industry trade rags arrive and I read that
Microsoft will continue to churn the operating systems
market for the forseeable future, thousands of good people
are being laid off by cheap systems that leave the survivors
harried and overworked, and that DEC still doesn't have a
clue.

Then I spotted a recent article in the Wall Street Journal
about employees in high-tech positions chucking it all and
opening bakeries, flower shops, antique stores and other
low-stress enterprises.

Hmmm... maybe they're right.

Maybe I should get out of this crazy business where
marketing hype generally overshadows technical reality.

Maybe I should turn my back on a career where I have to do
more reading than a medical doctor to stay even remotely
current in my field.

Maybe I should abandon the absurdity of an industry which
throws away perfectly good people and machines because of
the nebulous "benefits" of a new comuter/operating
system/paradigm/application.

Naah...

*****

Whoa... Reader and frequent correspondent Carl Wheeler of
Eastman Kodak passed along a small but useful command
procedure (Program 1) which cleanly stops all batch queues
on a system without stopping the queue manager. "This is
real useful just before running backups (as a detached job)
or whatever," Carl says and notes that "it can also be
modified to start the queues when finished."
 
Ticked off... that's what Kim Hawkins is. In my Decemeber
1992 column I mentioned receiving a "nifty" TREE.COM from
Kim and said I'd print it later. Then I published a
different tree in the June 94 issue and Kim writes,
"Granted, my procedure does not produce such a pretty
display, but it does have the advantage that you can capture
its output (using the "/output=" qualifier) and print it or
put it in documentation, Kim says. "And (I modestly point
out) it creates the tree using only 24 lines of code."

I've renamed the procedure KIMTREE.COM to distinguish it
from the other tree file for persons downloading the online
version. Note: you have to put the /OUTPUT= immediately
after the file specification of the command procedure,
otherwise DCL will treat /OUTPUT= as a parameter to be
passed to the procedure and not as a qualifier.

Never attribute to malice that which can be blamed on
stupidity, Kim. I forgot.

I am also incredibly lazy. Your chance of getting code
published diminishes greatly if I have to retype it from a
letter. If you don't have some form of e-mail capability,
send me your stuff on magnetic media. Keep it short, under
100 lines; make sure it works; and keep site-specific
references to a minimum.

Also be certain to include your return address in your
letter. When mail gets opened around here, the enevelopes
are immediately trashed, and it's not uncommon for the
letters not to be read until several days later. If your
return address appears only on the envelope, there's no
chance of you receiving a personal reply.

And if you have a gender-neutral name like Kim, howzabout
using a Ms. or Mr. somewhere in your letter? It's not
pleasant writing a couple paragraphs about a reader
submission without being able to use personal pronouns.

Going boldly; and going stupidly, as well...  Literally
hundreds of people swamped kgbarkes@gmail.com, my CompuServe
address, BBS system, fax machine and my non-cyberspatial
USPS mailbox with the news that -142 remains the value for
the starship pointer under Motif.

Why I thought the value changed, I really don't know. I
vaguely recall being told by various persons that the
starship pointer had disappeared under Motif, and I took
their word as gospel.

I said I'd print the name of the first person to respond to
my request, but it later occurred to me that would be
grossly unfair. Because of the vagaries of magazine delivery
and the fact many readers do not have e-mail access, it's
impossible to determine who was really first.

Further complicating matters is the fact the disk on my
VAXstation which serves the BBS' Internet and CompuServe
e-mail files crashed recently. I never back up Usenet
newsgroups because of the volume involved, but I do backup
private e-mail. That is, I thought I did. As I confidently
did a BACKUP/LIST on the saveset containing the most recent
incremental of the BBS, I discovered to my horror that I had
backed up the wrong directory and instead of internet mail I
had a perfect archival record of the past two weeks of
alt.devilbunnies.

The moral here is, of course, to always confirm that you're
backing up what you think you're backing up.

If you sent me e-mail concerning the pointer question and
didn't receive a DCL sticker and/or calendar from me, just
drop me another line and I'll send you the stuff
immediately. You're on your honor here, folks, since I have
no way of confirming that you originally sent me a response.

**********

Kevin G. Barkes is an independent consultant who is beside
himself with glee now that the new FX cable network is
airing reruns of "Wonder Woman" and that he can once again
watch Lynda Carter jump around in a spandex outfit with more
support than DEC's Colorado Springs and Atlanta offices
combined. He also knows the lyrics to the Wonder Woman theme
song, which brings him endless pleasure but causes his
spouse and children to lock the door leading to his office
and stuff the cracks with towels. Kevin lurks on comp.os.vms
and can be reached at kgbarkes@gmail.com.

PROGRAM 1:

$! STOP_BATCH_QUEUES.COM
$! Written by Carl Wheeler @ Eastman Kodak
$!
$START:
$ set noon
$ retry_flag = "FALSE"
$ temp = F$GETQUI("")
$!
$QLOOP:
$ qname = F$GETQUI("DISPLAY_QUEUE","QUEUE_NAME","*","BATCH")
$ if qname .eqs. "" then goto all_checked
$ jobactive = F$GETQUI("DISPLAY_JOB","JOB_EXECUTING",,"ALL_JOBS")
$ if jobactive
$   then
$     retry_flag = "TRUE"
$     stop/next 'qname
$   else
$     stop/reset 'qname 
$ endif 
$ goto qloop
$!
$ALL_CHECKED:
$ if retry_flag
$   then
$     wait 00:05
$     goto start
$   else
$     request "All BATCH queues have been cleanly stopped."
$ endif
$!
$ exit

PROGRAM 2.

$! KIMTREE.COM
$!
$! Written by Kim Hawkins
$!
$! Displays directory tree from directory specified,
$! or default is none specified. Use "/output=" to
$! redirect output to a file.
$!
$  if P1 .eqs. "" then p1 = f$environment("DEFAULT")
$  if (f$parse("''P1'*.*") .eqs. "") then -
$    exit 114762 ! %RMS-E-DNF, directory not found
$  write sys$output "    " + f$parse("X.X",p1,,"DIRECTORY") + " - TREE"
$   call sub_dir 'P1' 'f$environment("DEFAULT")'
$ sub_dir: subroutine
$  level = f$integer("''level'" + 1) !keep search streams separate
$  if ("''next_sub_dir'" .nes. "")
$   then prefix = "''prefix' |       "
$   else prefix = "''prefix'         "
$   endif
$   set default 'P1'
$   next_sub_dir = f$parse(f$search("*.dir", level),,,"NAME")
$ loop: if (next_sub_dir .nes "")
$  then
$   this_sub_dir = next_sub_dir
$   next_sub_dir = f$parse(f$search("*.dir",level),,,"name")
$   if (this_sub_dir .eqs. "000000") then goto loop
$   write sys$output "''PREFIX'+--- ''this_sub_dir'"
$   call sub_dir [.'this_sub_dir'] [-]
$   goto loop
$   endif
$  set default 'p2' ! up, or, if top level, original directory
$ endsubroutine