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Writing Real Programs in DCL, Second Edition is a revised edition of VAX/VMS: Writing Real Programs in DCL, written by Paul Anagnostopoulos in 1989. The book is intended for OpenVMS users already familiar with the operating system who wish to learn the DCL (short for "Digital Command Language") well enough to write scripts, ranging from basic file system commands up to and including scripts intended to be executed under VMS as part of CGI.
DCL is the interactive command interpreter that users encounter on a VMS system, and can also execute scripts. DCL's position in the architecture of VMS is equivalent to that of the Bourne shell in the UNIX system.
Classic computer books written in classic style to high standards about classic procedural languages look and feel similar; that is, they look dignified. This is a dignified book, a revision of a classic that stood almost a decade and has had time to mature in the keg.
Writing Real Programs in DCL takes you in an orderly progression from the elements of DCL to sophisticated scripting for CGI. The style is well-balanced between the needs of the average user and the needs of the programming sophisticate. The presentation is lucid, knowledgeable, and accurate. The transitions between each unit of knowledge are logical and the domain of discourse is well-defined. There is a steady induction of general VMS knowledge into the discussion. The overall range of problems which might reasonably be solved using DCL is explored thoroughly and in case detail.
Coauthor Steve Hoffman, who did most of the writing for the revision, has added new material on CGI, the Year 2000, and security, addressing problems and capabilities that have arisen in the years since the original publication. One of the finest compliments that one can pay the authors of a revised text is that the new material does not obtrude, buts blends smoothly with the original.
Typographically, using little "stickpin" icons to indicate a link between one unit and another serves to emphasize how the Web has transformed our underlying expectations of the way educational material is presented. This book is set in LaTex by the authors, and like many other similarly constructed texts, will make a splendid archival web document when all the modalities of property right protection have been solved in the publishing industry.
Though targeted at open VMS, all of the examples I tried ran also under VMS 5.2 on a MicroVAX.
If learning DCL quickly and in textbook fashion is what you need, this book will get you there. Keep Writing Real Programs in DCL on your shelf and expect few changes in DCL, a mature technology. "Writing Real Programs in DCL" is a polished book about a polished technology, and it's 100 percent free of horsefeathers.
-- Jack Woehr
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