6 Nov
2011
6 Nov
'11
10:30 a.m.
I never really dealt with Fortran in university, and if I had, it probably would have been
in a Unix context. Anyone have some pointers to me on how to process command-line
switches in VMS from Fortran (I'm specifically tinkering with f77, but I suppose f90
should do; it's a matter of environment)?
I guess it would be good to point out that I'm essentially a total neophyte when it
comes to working with systems that are not UNIX (or bare metal, or classic Mac OS). Best
I can tell is that I need to call either a SYS$ or CLI$ library function, but I'm a
bit lost in the giant manual and Google doesn't seem to be helping me find sample
code. The "standard" (which probably means UNIX-standard) iargc() and getarg()
functions don't seem to work, at least not without some external library linked in, so
I assume those aren't the way to go.
- Dave
6 Nov
6 Nov
10:51 a.m.
Anyone have some pointers to me on how to process
command-line
switches in VMS from Fortran (I'm specifically tinkering with f77,
but I suppose f90 should do; it's a matter of environment)?
The "standard" (which probably means
UNIX-standard) iargc() and
getarg() functions don't seem to work, at least not without some
external library linked in, so I assume those aren't the way to go.
I assume you're running it as a foreign command, rather than with RUN?
It's been a very long time since I used VMS - I think VMS 3.x was the
latest and greatest at the time - but I think you are correct, you need
to call some kind of CLI-interface function. I *think* (and this is
vaguer, quite possibly wrong) that your program may need to declare to
DCL what switches it takes and whether they take values.
Back in the day, this was documented enough that I managed to figure it
out, so unless VMS doc has gotten substantially worse, the necesary
info ought to be lurking there somewhere.
I realize this probably isn't much help; at most, it's "don't give up,
it should be there somewhere' encouragement.
Hmm, I might have VMS on a disk somewhere. If you can't get anywhere
any other way I can try to dig out the relevant machine and see if the
help files say enough to be useful - I think in my case I found it in
the dead-tree docs.
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11:18 a.m.
On Nov 6, 2011, at 1:51 PM, Mouse wrote:
I assume you're running it as a foreign command,
rather than with RUN?
Actually, I was doing it with RUN, which may have been the problem? Perhaps that's
not meant to pass command-line values. I'm new at this.
Back in the day, this was documented enough that I
managed to figure it
out, so unless VMS doc has gotten substantially worse, the necesary
info ought to be lurking there somewhere.
It's not *bad*, per se, it's just in a big HTML/PDF equivalent of a phone book, so
I'm having a spot of trouble figuring out in the morass of stuff where I should be
looking. The online index is terrible.
Hmm, I might have VMS on a disk somewhere. If you
can't get anywhere
any other way I can try to dig out the relevant machine and see if the
help files say enough to be useful - I think in my case I found it in
the dead-tree docs.
The online (and by "online" I mean "in VMS" this time) help seems to
be mostly about running the various commands to produce executables, so it's probably
not that. I'll keep poking around in the online (on HP's website) development
guide and see if it just takes some more patience. :-)
- Dave
11:15 a.m.
David Riley [fraveydank at gmail.com] wrote:
I never really dealt with Fortran in university, and
if I
had, it probably would have been in a Unix context. Anyone
have some pointers to me on how to process command-line
switches in VMS from Fortran (I'm specifically tinkering with
f77, but I suppose f90 should do; it's a matter of environment)?
You don't make it clear whether you are running this as a foreign
command
or whether you have created a command definition and are running your
program as a CLI command. Since the latter requires enough work that
you would have seen the docs at
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/84final/4493/4493pro_contents.html
I guess that you are doing the former.
In that case your program is being run as a "foreign" command.
So if your program is (for example) DISK$USERS:[USER]FOO.EXE
then you've done this at DCL:
FOO :== $DISK$USERS:[USER]FOO.EXE
and then you type
FOO MY COMMAND /LINE
In that case you want LIB$GET_FOREIGN:
http://www.itec.suny.edu/scsys/vms/OVMSDOC073/V73/5932/5932pro_023.html#
index_x_191
(I've no idea why google found that rather than the HP one ...)
The FORTRAN docs are also online so you should be able to find out how
to call library routines (pay attention to by value, by reference and by
descriptor).
Antonio
arcarlini at iee.org
11:22 a.m.
On Nov 6, 2011, at 2:15 PM, <arcarlini at iee.org> wrote:
David Riley [fraveydank at gmail.com] wrote:
Actually, this is pretty much exactly what I was looking for. Not sure why I wasn't
seeing it before, but that should do the trick. I guess, coming from UNIX, I wasn't
as clear on the distinction between an executable and a command, so it looks like I need
to build a command (or possibly, while I'm getting up to speed, just take my arguments
interactively, which is a whole lot easier).
Thanks!
- Dave
I never really dealt with Fortran in university,
and if I
had, it probably would have been in a Unix context. Anyone
have some pointers to me on how to process command-line
switches in VMS from Fortran (I'm specifically tinkering with
f77, but I suppose f90 should do; it's a matter of environment)?
You don't make it clear whether you are running this as a foreign
command
or whether you have created a command definition and are running your
program as a CLI command. Since the latter requires enough work that
you would have seen the docs at
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/84final/4493/4493pro_contents.html
I guess that you are doing the former.
12:48 p.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org
[mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of David Riley
Sent: 06 November 2011 19:23
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Things I should have learned in school
On Nov 6, 2011, at 2:15 PM, <arcarlini at iee.org> wrote:
Doing your own command is fairly easy. All the nuts and bolts are
descibed here:
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/82final/6100/aa-qsbde-te.pdf
Start by deciding what parameters and qualifiers you want.
The write your CLD file (see the above manual for the syntax: don't be
put
off by the apparent complexity, if you want something simple, the
language
is simple too).
If your command file is FOO.CLD you can now do
$ SET COMMAND FOO.CLD
and your command will be accessible as a DCL commad
(until you log out, if you want it forever you get to do
a slightly more complicated dance - once).
Now you write your command and parse with CLI$PRESENT and
CLI$GET_VALUE.
Jump to page CDU-48 and read that through. It's an example in
BASIC but it sounds like what you want to do. My (albeit rusty)
recollection is that BASIC and FORTRAN calling conventions are
quite similar, so there's a decent chance that the example does
what you want. You should also look in SYS$EXAMPLES (just search
for CLI$ in there and see if there are any FORTRAN examples).
Antonio
arcarlini at iee.org
David Riley [fraveydank at gmail.com] wrote:
Actually, this is pretty much exactly what I was looking for.
Not sure why I wasn't seeing it before, but that should do
the trick. I guess, coming from UNIX, I wasn't as clear on
the distinction between an executable and a command, so it
looks like I need to build a command (or possibly, while I'm
getting up to speed, just take my arguments interactively,
which is a whole lot easier). I never really dealt with Fortran in university,
and if I
had, it probably would have been in a Unix context. Anyone
have some pointers to me on how to process command-line
switches in VMS from Fortran (I'm specifically tinkering with
f77, but I suppose f90 should do; it's a matter of environment)?
You don't make it clear whether you are running this as a foreign
command or whether you have created a command definition and are
running your program as a CLI command. Since the latter requires
enough work that you would have seen the docs at
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/84final/4493/4493pro_contents.html
I guess that you are doing the former. 
7 Nov
7 Nov
1:08 a.m.
On 06/11/11 19:22, David Riley wrote:
On Nov 6, 2011, at 2:15 PM,<arcarlini at
iee.org> wrote:
Dave,
If you want to go down the CLI route and define your application in the
command dictionary then there is a simple example of defining a command
and calling CLI to process the options here (admittedly C based, but the
underlying calls are easy to transfer between languages):
http://www.wickensonline.co.uk/retro/programming-2.html
David Riley [fraveydank at gmail.com] wrote:
Actually, this is pretty much exactly what
I was looking for. Not sure why I wasn't seeing it before, but that should do the
trick. I guess, coming from UNIX, I wasn't as clear on the distinction between an
executable and a command, so it looks like I need to build a command (or possibly, while
I'm getting up to speed, just take my arguments interactively, which is a whole lot
easier).
Thanks!
- Dave
I never really dealt with Fortran in university,
and if I
had, it probably would have been in a Unix context. Anyone
have some pointers to me on how to process command-line
switches in VMS from Fortran (I'm specifically tinkering with
f77, but I suppose f90 should do; it's a matter of environment)?
You don't
make it clear whether you are running this as a foreign
command
or whether you have created a command definition and are running your
program as a CLI command. Since the latter requires enough work that
you would have seen the docs at
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/84final/4493/4493pro_contents.html
I guess that you are doing the former. 
6 Nov
6 Nov
3:59 p.m.
On 6 Nov 2011 at 13:30, David Riley wrote:
I never really dealt with Fortran in university, and
if I had, it
probably would have been in a Unix context. Anyone have some pointers
to me on how to process command-line switches in VMS from Fortran (I'm
specifically tinkering with f77, but I suppose f90 should do; it's a
matter of environment)?
Don't feel too bad.
There's absolutely no reason that you should have learned this in
school. External command-line processing isn't discussed in the ANSI
standard in f77 or f90. Every vendor does it differently.
One approach, for example, is to backspace input one record and
perform a READ to retrieve the command line, but that is by no means
universal.
--Chuck
7 Nov
7 Nov
3:06 a.m.
I never really dealt with Fortran in university, and if I had, it probably
would have been in a Unix context. Anyone have some pointers to me on how to
process command-line switches in VMS from Fortran (I'm specifically tinkering
with f77, but I suppose f90 should do; it's a matter of environment)?
I guess it would be good to point out that I'm essentially a total neophyte
when it comes to working with systems that are not UNIX (or bare metal, or
classic Mac OS). Best I can tell is that I need to call either a SYS$ or
CLI$ library function, but I'm a bit lost in the giant manual and Google
doesn't seem to be helping me find sample code. The "standard" (which
probably means UNIX-standard) iargc() and getarg() functions don't seem to
work, at least not without some external library linked in, so I assume
those aren't the way to go.
Others have described how to do this by updating command tables or by creating
a foreign command. However, neither of these is entirely satisfactory on it's
own. (I will explain further if anyone is interested.)
It is possible to combine both methods to solve several problems. Create a
command definition file as would be used to update command tables but instead of
using SET COMMAND to update command tables, use SET COMMAND /OBJECT to create an
object file representation of the command definition. This is then linked with
the main programme written in Fortran or any other language. Even though a
foreign command is used to activate the programme (eg cmd:==$device:[dir]file),
it is also possible to call CLI$PRESENT, CLI$GET_VALUE and friends to have DCL
parse and validate the command. For a Fortran example of this technique, see:
http://www.tomwade.eu/software/superlock.html
(Unzip SUPERLOCK020.ZIP under VMS and use BACKUP SUPERLOCK020.A /SAVE [] /LOG
to extract the source.)
Regards,
Peter Coghlan.
4794
days inactive
4795
days old
8 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
-
arcarlini＠iee.org -
cclist＠sydex.com -
CCTECH＠beyondthepale.ie -
fraveydank＠gmail.com -
mark＠wickensonline.co.uk -
mouse＠Rodents-Montreal.ORG