Programming

[20-Dec-2011]
New examples:   A few new programming examples have been added to the site. They are for the following services: sys$get_arith_exception, sys$gettim_prec, and sys$power_control. (24 words, 0 comments, 0 pings)

[16-Aug-2011]
IOSB status for GETxxI calls:   Did you know that the status value in the I/O status block for most of the get information calls is a longword? What this means in practice is that you should be testing and returning the full longword rather than just the word for calls such as $GETSYI(W), $GETJPI(W), $GETQUI(W), etc. (346 words, 1 comments, 0 pings)

[19-Nov-2010]
C++ expert help required:   As you may know, I help port Artistic Style, a code formatter, to OpenVMS. During the last porting effort, I was completely baffled by a change in behaviour that was only apparent on the OpenVMS port. The port was straightforward as it always has been (except when the maintainer decided to allow the software to process multiple files in one command - that was a significant effort) but nearly any input file now results in the truncation of the output file. Complex input produces control characters in the output! While I'm pretty good at C, I'm frustrated when it comes to file iterator classes built on sstream, etc. If anyone can offer me a hand debugging this problem I'd be most grateful. It would certainly be good news to get the latest version of Astyle ported. Access to my development environment can be arranged if necessary. (146 words, 1 comments, 0 pings)

[15-Jul-2010]
Universal symbol deletion:   Quite some time ago, I assisted the company I now work for to do a port of their in-house ERP system from Alpha to Itanium. As expected, some of the source code was missing when I got around to attempting to compile the entire system. Unfortunately, one of the bits that was missing was the source code to the large screen handling library that the application used. (533 words, 0 comments, 0 pings)

[29-Jun-2010]
MATH X01-04:   A new version of the MATH utility is available on the MATH download area. This corrects a bug with DCL symbol naming. (101 words, 0 comments, 0 pings)

[11-Dec-2009]
CMS API documentation:   The documentation for the CMS API is in drastic need of a review. And have I found a significant memory overrun in the API? You bet I have. (429 words, 2 comments, 0 pings)

[25-Nov-2009]
Logging verses debugging:   Ian Cartwright wrote an interesting piece calling for banning the debugger in the late stages of a development project. He says that "This usually leads to a big upswing in the amount of logging and it's logging we know helps to fix issues". Previously in the same article he implies that a single exception and its stack trace are not enough information to locate the problem. I don't agree with either of these positions. (368 words, 1 comments, 0 pings)

[20-Nov-2009]
MMS dependency files:   Recently, I've been asked to retrofit a build dependency system, a source versioning system, and redo the code promotion scripts for a rather large code repository. The obvious choice here is the CMS and MMS tools from the DECset product. I thought I'd start with the dependency stuff, as I can then use it to test the checkout and checkin, rebuilds, and promotion stuff. (242 words, 0 comments, 0 pings)

[26-Sep-2009]
Callable copy:   Here's how to copy a file using the Convert API in COBOL. (100 words, 0 comments, 0 pings)

[07-Sep-2009]
MATH X01-02 released:   A minor irritant bug in the MATH package was squashed today moments after it reared its ugly head. (80 words, 0 comments, 0 pings)

Older Entries