[HECnet] Arabic / Unicode support on VMS?

[Clem Cole]

logical names have a unix equiv. in environment variables.   

there are some differences and advantages to both but the idea and practice ends up being the same IMO 

what you are doing in resolve$foo could just as easily be put in the environment and get the same result

that said you are correct that unix often used small txt files for some set up and configuration but some programs used the env too. truth is sna files were used in some of the dec OSes too -   it was just a matter of taste.   

I don't think one is better than the other -- I do think when in Rome I would want to use the scheme that is the operational standard under the least astonishment principle 

Clem

On Dec 19, 2013, at 5:14 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:

On 2013-12-19 21:07, John Wilson wrote:
From: Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se>

To get more on topic - I'm working on a name resolver for RSX right now.
It's a totally awesome thing, and I only wish Unix (or even VMS) had
something similar.

Me too!   Port?

To Unix? Not likely. Logical names just don't have a good equivalent. The Unix way is text files with configurations instead. But the form of that is already established, with the /etc/resolv.conf and /etc/nsswitch.conf (and /etc/hosts) files. Hard to change, and those do unfortunately not easily allow user overrides at any level.

(Now I just need to finish the DNS part of it.)

Details.   Sounds like good engineering so far.   Nice going!

Yeah. The DNS part is not really difficult. It's just a question of setting up and sending out UDP packets, and then parsing the responses. Although I must admit that DNS have some bits that I'm not too happy about.

Working on building the DNS query right now. That is actually really simple. Doing the parsing will probably take a few days of work.

    Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                                   || "I'm on a bus
                                                                ||   on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se                         ||   Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                                         ||   tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol