EXTENDED SWITCH Release Notes September 1994 This file contains the release notes for Extended Switch V4.5-1. It describes any features, restrictions, changes, or additions made to Extended Switch in this release, and includes information that is not provided in the Extended Switch Reference Guide. Revision/Update Information: This is a revised manual. Operating System and Version: All versions of VMS. Software version: Extended Switch V4.5-1 ________________________ September 15, 1994 Permission is granted to copy and redistribute this document for no commercial gain. The information in this document is subject to change without notice and should not be construed as a commitment by the author. The author assumes no responsibility for any errors that may appear in this document. DISCLAIMER: The software described in this document is provided "as is". No guarantee is made by the author as to the suitability, reliability, security, usefulness, or performance of this software. The author is not responsible for any losses that may occur from the use of this software. The following are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation: DEC, VAX, Alpha, AXP, and VMS. __________ Copyright ©1994 David M. Fabritius. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This document was prepared using VAX DOCUMENT, Version 2.2. _______________________________________________________ Contents _________________________________________________ PREFACE v _______________________________________________________ CHAPTER 1 INSTALLATION NOTES 1-1 _________________________________________________ 1.1 ACCESSING THE INSTALLATION GUIDE 1-1 _________________________________________________ 1.2 COMMANDS 1-1 _________________________________________________ 1.3 ON-LINE HELP 1-2 _________________________________________________ 1.4 SUBSTITUTIONS 1-2 _______________________________________________________ CHAPTER 2 NEW FEATURES AND BUG FIXES 2-1 _________________________________________________ 2.1 NEW FEATURES 2-1 _________________________________________________ 2.2 BUG FIXES 2-2 _______________________________________________________ CHAPTER 3 BRIEF HISTORY 3-1 iii Contents _______________________________________________________ CHAPTER 4 KNOWN BUGS AND RESTRICTIONS 4-1 _________________________________________________ 4.1 BUGS 4-1 _________________________________________________ 4.2 RESTRICTIONS 4-1 _________________________________________________ 4.3 PROBLEM REPORTS 4-1 iv _______________________________________________________ Preface Extended Switch is a VMS utility that replaces the DCL command SET DEFAULT. It provides all of the functionality of the original command as well as several enhancements and a greatly simplified user interface. Both VAX and Alpha architectures are supported by Extended Switch. __________________________________________________________________ Intended Audience This manual is intended for all system users. Please read these release notes before installing Extended Switch V4.5-1. __________________________________________________________________ Acknowledgements I wish to thank Hunter Goatley for providing a working model upon which this documentation is based. I would also like to thank Jon Bohlke, Tom Hopson, Tom McCormick, and Brian Schenkenberger for their feedback and assistance during the development of Extended Switch. v _______________________________________________________ 1 Installation Notes This chapter contains items of interest pertaining to the installation of Extended Switch. __________________________________________________________________ 1.1 Accessing the Installation Guide The distribution kit includes an Installation/Reference Guide which you may wish to extract and print prior to the actual installation. Postscript and plain ASCII text versions of the manual are included. To extract both of these formats, use the following command: $ BACKUP SWITCH045.A/SAVE/SEL=(SWITCH.PS,SWITCH.TXT) *.* __________________________________________________________________ 1.2 Commands The commands used to invoke Extended Switch are normally placed in the system-wide DCL command tables (SYS$LIBRARY:DCLTABLES.EXE) during installation. The installation gives you the option of adding the commands to the DCL command tables or not. It is recommended that you do so to make Extended Switch available to all users on the system. Extended Switch may also be defined as a foreign command. 1-1 Installation Notes __________________________________________________________________ 1.3 On-line Help During the installation, you will be given the option of installing the help file for Extended Switch in a help library (the default is SYS$SYSROOT:[SYSHLP]HELPLIB.HLB). The on-line help files can be found in the directory where you choose to install them during the installation. __________________________________________________________________ 1.4 Substitutions One of the many features of Extended Switch is its ability to substitute concealed logicals for long directory specifications. This is especially useful when updating your prompt to indicate the current directory. For example, if a group of users has a common root such as: NODE$DKA100:[USERS.GROUP.usernames] and there is a logical definition such as: "GROUP" = "NODE$DKA100:[USERS.GROUP.]" (LNM$SYSTEM_TABLE) then Extended Switch can be configured to automatically substitute the logical name instead of using the full directory specification. This is done by simply providing this information during the installation procedure, where it is complied into the program itself. Because this information becomes a part of the executable image, these substitutions are always checked for every activation. Therefore, relatively few substitutions should be defined; and preferably only those that apply to a large percentage of the users of this utility. Performance was considered to be more important than flexibility when this feature was designed and implemented. 1-2 _______________________________________________________ 2 New Features and Bug Fixes This chapter describes changes from the original release of Extended Switch to the current release. __________________________________________________________________ 2.1 New Features | The following new features have been added. | V4.5-1: | | 1 Several code modifications were made to allow | for correct compilation on both the VAX and Alpha | architectures. | | 2 Instead of always changing both the device and the | directory, logic has been added to determine whether | or not the device should be changed. This corrects | problems when dealing with devices which are really | concealed logical lists. | | 3 Extremely long directory names are now better | supported when updating the prompt. Instead of | returning to the default dollar sign prompt, a | truncated subdirectory string with a continuation | symbol is displayed. | | 4 The /UPDATE_PROMPT qualifier now takes two optional | quoted string arguments. The first is added to the | beginning of the prompt, the second is placed at the | end. | | 5 Prompt values are now checked to ensure that they | are quoted strings. | | 6 The substitutions which are defined for the current | installation are displayed when using the /VERSION | qualifier. 2-1 New Features and Bug Fixes V4.4-3: 1 Extended Switch is now available as a foreign command. 2 The help file may now be installed into any available library. 3 The /RECALL qualifier, along with the /ALL and /ERASE qualifiers, where added to provide an interface to default history information that is consistent with the DCL command RECALL. 4 Repeatedly switching to the same directory no longer fills your default history with the current directory. This is also consistent with the DCL command RECALL. 5 Both the /BACKWARDS and /RECALL qualifiers accept substrings of previous defaults, as well as the numbers one through five, to select the desired default directory. __________________________________________________________________ 2.2 Bug Fixes The following bug fixes have been made. | V4.5-1: | | 1 When the default device is concealed logical list, | but the default directory does not exist under all | devices in the list, it is now possible to switch | up and out normally. The default device is modified | to indicated that the current default is no longer a | valid member of the concealed logical list. | | 2 Switching up from a subdirectory of a device that | is really a list of concealed logicals no longer | changes your device. | | 3 The processing of multiple dots to switch up | directory levels has been modified to work correctly | on the Alpha. 2-2 New Features and Bug Fixes | 4 Specifying a prompt string of a single letter no | longer causes a stack dump. V4.4-3: 1 A minor bug when using a single dot, 'SWITCH .', to switch to the current directory has been corrected. 2-3 _______________________________________________________ 3 Brief History This is the third version of Extended Switch that has been widely released. A detailed history of this program may be found in the comments of the source code. This program has been in use for several years at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, where Switch was originally developed in MACRO32 by Bob Shew. Since that time, I have expanded the scope of the program and rewritten it in both Pascal and C, and finally once again in MACRO32. Extended Switch is currently being used by sites in the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, Italy, Canada, and the US. I would very much like to add to this list. 3-1 _______________________________________________________ 4 Known Bugs and Restrictions This chapter describes the known bugs and restrictions of Extended Switch V4.5-1. __________________________________________________________________ 4.1 Bugs | There are no known undesired features as of this | version of Extended Switch. __________________________________________________________________ 4.2 Restrictions Extended Switch V4.5-1 does not properly handle a node qualified default specification. The following are examples of unsupported specifications which are allowed when using SET DEFAULT. $ SET DEFAULT NODE::DKA0:[000000] $ SET DEFAULT NODE"optional-username password"::DKA0:[000000] __________________________________________________________________ 4.3 Problem Reports The author may be contacted via the internet at FabritDM@CS.Rose-Hulman.Edu. Feedback is both welcome and encouraged. Due to the fact that the author does not, unforunately, have direct access to an Alpha, exhaustive testing on this platform has not been completed. If you have any problems using Extended Switch on an Alpha system, please let me know so that I can investigate, and hopefully correct, the problem. 4-1