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<p>Thanks!!<br>
</p>
<p>Tops-20 does case folding also, although it's not be a matter of
taste. The monitor database is a hash table based on SIXBIT,
which (of course) does not have any lower case. Makes node name
comparison pretty quick: a single instruction. Tops-10 does
case-folding also; they share DECnet code in a number of cases.</p>
<p><font size="+1"><tt>SETND2</tt></font> doesn't use hash tables
but rather sorted tables. The node names are kept in a <font
size="+1"><tt>TBLUK%</tt></font> format table (in ASCII) so that
they can be managed with <font size="+1"><tt>TBADD%</tt></font>
and <font size="+1"><tt>TBDEL%</tt></font> and searched with <font
size="+1"><tt>TBLUK%</tt></font>. The real value is you can
then parse for them directly with <font size="+1"><tt>COMND%</tt></font>
and get escape recognition and completion; this helps when trying
to understand certain bugs, but it is slower.</p>
<p>There is a separate list sorted by address, so look ups (I.E.,
binary searches) can be done.<br>
</p>
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<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">On 6/18/21 5:13 PM, Paul Koning wrote:
Yes.
The actual rule is exactly what you describe in COMND%: a valid node name consists of 1-6 alphanumerics including at least one letter. It doesn't have to be at the start, unlike, say, variable names in most programming languages.
Some DECnet implementations do case folding, converting lower case to upper (which is generally considered the standard form). I don't know if that is universally done. RSTS/E is an example of an implementation that has the case folding.
paul
<blockquote type="cite"><hr width="100%" size="2"><pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">On Jun 18, 2021, at 5:03 PM, Thomas DeBellis <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:tommytimesharing@gmail.com"><tommytimesharing@gmail.com></a> wrote:
...
I know that a DECnet node can be a maximum of six characters long with only the numerals 0 (zero) to 9 (nine) and the letters A to Z. However, I noticed some code in COMND% that checks to see that a node name has at least one alphabetic character in it. I had never thought about that and was wondering what the actual standard says (or where that standard is).
Does is matter where the letter is? In other words, are five numeral zero's followed by the letter 'A' valid? Is '00000A' OK?
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