vmsish(3p) Perl Programmers Reference Guide vmsish(3p)NAMEvmsish - 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() 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
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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 vmsishqw(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
$STATUS)
EXAMPLE:
use vmsish 'hushed'; # turn on hushed flag
use Carp; # Carp compiled hushed
exit 44; # will be hushed
croak('I die'); # will be hushed
no vmsish 'hushed'; # turn off hushed flag
exit 44; # will not be hushed
croak('I die2'): # WILL be hushed, croak was
compiled hushed
You can also control the 'hushed' flag at run-time,
using the built-in routine vmsish::hushed(). Without
argument, it returns the hushed status. Since
vmsish::hushed is built-in, you do not need to "use
vmsish" to call it.
EXAMPLE:
if ($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.
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The messages from error exits from inside the Perl
core are generally more serious, and are not
suppressed.
See "Pragmatic Modules" in perlmod.
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