vmsish(3)        Perl Programmers Reference Guide       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 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 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...\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 sup-
             pressed.

       See "Pragmatic Modules" in perlmod.



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