vmsish(3)

NAME

vmsish - Perl pragma to control VMS-specific language fea
tures

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-spe
cific features available: 'status' (a.k.a '$?'), 'exit',
'time' and 'hushed'.

If you're not running VMS, this module does nothing.

"vmsish status"

This makes $? and "system" return the native VMS
exit status instead of emulating the POSIX exit sta
tus.

"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 expect
ing "unix-style" Perl to avoid having to parse VMS
error messages. It does not supress 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 compila
tion: 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(). With out 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...0 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
supressed.

See "Pragmatic Modules" in perlmod.

perl v5.8.0 2002-06-01 vmsish(3)