RE: OT - Shutting down an RS/6000 ?

[James Rich <james@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 14 Nov 2002, Joe Pluta wrote:

> As you pointed out, comparing OS/400 and *nix is a little like comparing
> coconuts and clocksprings, but there is one area that really got me back in
> the old days, which was the lack of bidirectional program parameters.  The
> ability to pass parameters between programs (even programs of different
> languages) has long been one of the most important features of the IBM
> midrange, since the S/38 days in fact, and yet was unavailable in HP/UX.  We
> had to get around the problem by writing parameters to a file and reading
> them back in when the called program ended.  Not very elegant.  There's
> probably a better way to do it today, but I've never found one.

Huh???  This has always existed.  Not identical to OS/400, but the ability
is certainly there.

Many of the old programs I have to work on use *LDA to pass parameters.
The unix equivalent is environment variables.  I prefer environment
variables to the local data area because you don't have to start and end
positions.  Instead you have to use variable names.

*entry plists type passing is also there.  Again, not identical in
implementation but the same thing functionally.  The command line consists
of :

command <parm1> <parm2> ...

The parmN are passed to the command.  That is what the argc and argv
parameters are in every C main() function.  Rudimentary syntax checking is
done by using getopt() which also neatly parses the arguments for you.

James Rich