PH Cleanup Routines

[Chris.Sharman@ccagroup.co.uk]

>If you are one of those unlucky non UNIX sites (and do not have tools
>like nawk or pearl), you can write very simple C (or much more
>convoluted COBOL) programs to do the same thing.

OK, I'll bite. Most of the handy text processing stuff is available for VMS
as freeware: certainly perl is. There's also the Language Sensitive
Editor/Source Code Analyser (part of DECset, which you can extend to handle
new languages, and which most compilers (not PH) support by generating
structured diagnostic & analysis files. Cognos provide the language
definition (.ENV), but not the .DIA or the .ANA.

>This did allow us to clean up our code somewhat, especially deleting
>programs that were not called from anywhere. However, this only went
>part of the way. What I mean is, that just because a program is
>referenced in the code, does not necessarily mean that it is used. The
>way we got around this problem, was to create a fast single logging to a
>sequential file from every program showing the date/time/user etc... As
>the University has an annual cycle, we were able to identify dead
>programs (along with other useful information) after a year of logging.
>This has got rid of quite a bit more dead wood then the first approach.

I use the VMS file system for this: $ set vol/retain=(0-::.01,1-0). It then
logs last time read on every file (actually about a day after) in the expiry
date field. You can then review them or just $ delete/expir/bef=<whenever>
So much easier than U**x. [But seriously, the easy way to strip deadwood on
VMS].
______________________________________________________________________
Chris Sharman			Chris.Sharman@CCAgroup.co.uk
CCA Stationery Ltd, Eastway, Fulwood, Preston, Lancashire, PR2 9WS.