Re: How to pass commandline parameters to a vax vms ada main prog

[kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <32E71F0B.270@dfd.dlr.de>, Markus Wolfgart <wolfgart@dfd.dlr.de> writes:

> How to pass comandline parameters to an ada main procedure written
> in vax vms 5.1 ada. Do I need to import the starlet lib ?

On operating systems which have command line parameters, Ada 83
access to those parameters is only via implementation-specific
mechanisms.

For DEC Ada on VMS, the Starlet package supports System Services,
but access to command line parameters is not supported via those
System Services.  (There is a way to do it, but it is purposefully
undocumented so that DEC is free to change the details.  Kind of
like a thick binding.)

Access to command line parameters is via Run-Time libraries,
and you have two choices.

For a quick-and-dirty (i.e., Unix emulation) style of access to
the command line, use the LIB package and in particular the
subprogram LIB$GET_COMMAND.  Parse the result yourself.

For full-featured command line access appropriate if the users
of your program are accustomed to VMS, use the CLI package and
the various command line retrieval and parsing subprograms
therein.

Larry Kilgallen