vmsdcl

How do I search text in a file with DCL


How do I search text in a file with DCL? Yes, I have to use DCL.

The file format is straight forward:

<NUMBER OF ENTRIES>
<ID>  <DIRECTORY>
<ID>  <DIRECTORY>
.
.
.
<ID>  <DIRECTORY>

They're separated by a few white space characters. I just need to search the file for a given ID and extract the DIRECTORY.

It's a really simple task, but I can't seem to find any decent DCL documentation anywhere.


Solution

  • Edited.... the forum 'eats' strings like <xx> unless marked as code.    
    

    Are there pointy brackets on the datalines or not? Please provide a REAL example is it or: XX XXX-DIRECTORY

    I am assuming the first.

    VMS as it ships does NOT have a standard tool to select a field from a record. But there are a bunch of standard tools available for OpenVMS which can do this. Mostly notably (g)AWK and PERL So that's what I would use:

    $ gawk /comm="$1 == ""<xx>"" { print $2 }" tmp.tmp
    <xxx-DIRECTORY>
    

    or

    $ perl -ne "print $1 if /^\s*<xx>.*?<([^>]*)/" tmp.tmp
    xxx-DIRECTORY
    

    Those can be augmented for case-and-space-sensitivity, as needed and trim that <> as needed. And maybe you need the search ID to be a parameter or not.

    Anyway, in a pure DCL script it could look like....

    $ IF p2.eqs."" then exit 16
    $ CLOSE/NOLOG file
    $ OPEN/READ file 'p1
    $loop:
    $ READ/END=done file rec
    $ id = F$EDIT( F$ELEM(0,">",F$ELEM(1,"<",rec)), "UPCASE")
    $ IF id.NES.p2 THEN  GOTO loop
    $ dir = F$ELEM(0,">",F$ELEM(2,"<",rec))
    $ WRITE SYS$OUTPUT dir
    $ GOTO loop
    $done:
    $CLOSE/NOLOG file
    

    if the <> do not exist, use this for core...

    $ rec = F$EDIT(rec,"TRIM,COMPRESS")
    $ id = F$EDI(F$ELEM(0," ",rec),"UPCASE")
    $ IF id.NES.p2 THEN  GOTO loop
    $ dir = F$ELEM(1," ",rec)
    

    And the perl would be:

    $ perl -ne "print $1 if /^\s*<xx>\s+(\S+)/" tmp.tmp
    

    Good luck Hein