vmsish

vmsish(3)	       Perl Programmers Reference Guide		    vmsish(3)



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 VMS, 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$_NORMAL), instead of emulating UNIX exit(), which considers
	     "exit 1" to indicate an error.  As with the CRTL’s exit() func-
	     tion, "exit 0" is also mapped to an exit status of SS$_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 gen-
	     erally more serious, and are not suppressed.

       See "Pragmatic Modules" in perlmod.



perl v5.8.8			  2001-09-21			    vmsish(3)