phweb question specific to vms - solved

[Chris Sharman]

Joe Boyle wrote:

> GREAT code :-)
> 
> but just a couple of points,
> 
> 1. am really surprised that "LNM$PROCESS" worked,  I seem to recall 
> nearly always having to use "LNM$JOB".

Indeed - lnm$process will only work if the subprocess is created after 
the logical (because new subprocesses get a copy of process logicals) - 
subsequent run commands (in an existing subprocess) won't see updated 
logicals, unless they're LNM$JOB.
Where your quick screens are themselves subprocesses of a web master 
process, though, LNM$JOB obviously won't work at all, unless you qualify 
you logical names with the quick screen's pid, which would be very hard 
to do - easiest might be to make your subprocesses log out, so you get a 
new one for each run command.

> 2. to address's Chris's point on large directories, you might aswell go 
> the whole hog and create a directory to put the file in.

But where are you going to put that directory ;)
Seriously though, my preferred solution is to devise a hierarchy to 
create a directory to every 1000 files or so - that gets you up to a 
million files without stressing the vms directory management unduly.
[the actual limit is a directory size of 128 blocks pre-7.2 or so, and 
somewhat larger (unspecified) after that. The symptoms of bloat problems 
are obscure, usually very slow directory operations (add,delete), very 
occasionally %RMS-F-DME from DCL f$search or similar. The cure is (1) 
give a reproducible copy to VMS support, if you can (I've never 
succeeded, other than by letting them log in to see for themselves).
(2) tidy the directory
(3) dfu dir/compress/trunc ! off freeware disk
The cause is that VMS ODS2 directories are primitive structures, and 
adding/deleting can involve shuffling up, which is fine until you get 
too big to cache. 7.2(ish) removed the 128 block limit.]

Chris


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