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Last modified: Friday, October 31, 2008 at 10:13 PM.
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Is that a VAX in your pocket or are you happy to see me? Permanent link to this item in the archive.

Why, yes Virginia, we are actually using a mailbox to communicate with a detached process in VMS instead of using the SYS() call left over from the dark, dim PDP-11 days of yore... about time!

And quite a bit more efficient than the quick-n-dirty method I was using in a previous version of this little gem (creating a detached process, running a program to do our thing, and getting back some info via the job logical name table. Sure it worked... but ugly doesn't do it justice.)

 (What's a SYS() call? You'll have to dig up a RSTS/E system programming guide for that... it takes up a couple chapters. Fortunately, the stuff that still works in VMS (via HP Basic) (30 years later - that is what is known as compatibility folks.) only takes up a single chapter. In the RSTS/E docs -- if it is in the BASIC docs... I've never found it.

And yes, I do program in other languages... let's not discuss the joys of C# vs Visual Basic vs Javascript vs Smalltalk. I have a headache already...