vmsish (3)

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NAME

vmsish - Perl pragma to control VMS-specific language features

SYNOPSIS

    use vmsish;

    use vmsish 'status';        # or '$?'
    use vmsish 'exit';
    use vmsish 'time';

    use vmsish 'hushed';
    no vmsish 'hushed';
    vmsish::hushed($hush);

    use vmsish;
    no vmsish 'time';

DESCRIPTION

If no import list is supplied, all possible VMS-specific features are assumed. Currently, there are four VMS-specific features available: 'status' (a.k.a '$?'), 'exit', 'time' and 'hushed'.

If you're not running

this module does nothing.

vmsish status

This makes $? and "system" return the native

VMS

exit status instead of emulating the

POSIX

exit status.

vmsish exit

This makes "exit 1" produce a successful exit (with status

SS$_NORMAL

), instead of emulating

UNIX

exit(), which considers "exit 1" to indicate an error. As with the

CRTL

's exit() function, "exit 0" is also mapped to an exit status of

SS$_NORMAL,

and any other argument to exit() is used directly as Perl's exit status.

vmsish time

This makes all times relative to the local time zone, instead of the default of Universal Time (a.k.a Greenwich Mean Time, or

GMT

).

vmsish hushed

This suppresses printing of

VMS

status messages to

SYS$OUTPUT

and

SYS$ERROR

if Perl terminates with an error status, and allows programs that are expecting ``unix-style'' Perl to avoid having to parse

VMS

error messages. It does not suppress any messages from Perl itself, just the messages generated by

DCL

after Perl exits. The

DCL

symbol $STATUS will still have the termination status, but with a high-order bit set:

EXAMPLE:
    $

 perl -e``exit 44;''                          Non-hushed error exit
    %SYSTEM-F-ABORT, abort                       

DCL

 message
    $ show sym $STATUS
      $STATUS == ``%X0000002C''

    $ perl -e"use vmsish qw(hushed); exit 44;"   Hushed error exit
    $ show sym $STATUS
      $STATUS == "%X1000002C"

The 'hushed' flag has a global scope during compilation: the exit() or die() commands that are compiled after 'vmsish hushed' will be hushed when they are executed. Doing a ``no vmsish 'hushed''' turns off the hushed flag.

The status of the hushed flag also affects output of

VMS

error messages from compilation errors. Again, you still get the Perl error message (and the code in $STATUS)

EXAMPLE:
   

 use vmsish 'hushed';    # turn on hushed flag
    use Carp;          # Carp compiled hushed
    exit 44;           # will be hushed
    croak('I die');    # will be hushed
    no vmsish 'hushed';     # turn off hushed flag
    exit 44;           # will not be hushed
    croak('I die2'):   # 

WILL

 be hushed, croak was compiled hushed

You can also control the 'hushed' flag at run-time, using the built-in routine vmsish::hushed(). Without argument, it returns the hushed status. Since vmsish::hushed is built-in, you do not need to ``use vmsish'' to call it.

EXAMPLE:
   

 if ($quiet_exit) {
        vmsish::hushed(1);
    } 
    print ``Sssshhhh...I'm hushed...\n'' if vmsish::hushed();
    exit 44;

Note that an exit() or die() that is compiled 'hushed' because of ``use vmsish'' is not un-hushed by calling vmsish::hushed(0) at runtime.

The messages from error exits from inside the Perl core are generally more serious, and are not suppressed.

See ``Perl Modules'' in perlmod.