Fetch Softworks

VMS support (revisited) (4 posts)

• Started 21 years ago by davis157
• Latest reply 21 years ago from Jim Matthews

• davis157 Member

  There is an earlier thread regarding "VMS support." This is a bit long, but I wanted to provide examples and explanations as fully as possible.

  First of all, I wanted to point out that, depending on the VMS FTP server in use, it may be possible to implement solutions that provide the features requested for Fetch in this earlier thread on the server side. For example, both the MadGoat FTP server and the FTP server packaged with TCP/IP Services for OpenVMS (formerly known as UCX) provide for means to hide version numbers and/or only display the highest file version(s). On the other hand, neither of these server packages seem to work completely perfectly with Fetch.

  Here are a couple suggestions for Fetch that would help us VMS users (and perhaps others, too):

  • Folders first: I've seen at least one other request for this feature. This would be especially helpful for VMS users accessing ODS-5 file systems. The idea is to provide a simple check box that, when enabled, always displays folders first in a listing.
  • Generalized file name filtering: The Windows (sorry :()) product WS_FTP provides this in a limited manner, with the ability to filter file extensions. For VMS users, you can configure WS_FTP to strip version numbers by defining ";*" as an empty string on transfer. A more generalized approach could handle not only file version numbers, but ODS-5 file naming style. For example, you might have a file on an ODS-5 file system named
    "My^_Favorite^_^.MP3s.Lis"
    If viewed from a PC via Pathworks (which allows direct access to the VMS file system from a Windows client), this would be displayed as
    "My Favorite .MP3s.Lis"
    It would be great if Fetch could provide a file name filtering mechanism such that, during file transfer, I could have Fetch enforce the following rules (in order):
    1. Any file name ending with ";" and an integer should have this information stripped.
    2. Any file name containing a "^" (circumflex) immediately followed by another character should replace this character sequence with a single character. If the character which follows the "^" is an underscore ("_"), the replacement character is a space (" ") character; otherwise, the replacement character is the literal character which follows the "^".

  Perhaps this could be implemented with a regex-based handler of some kind.

  Regards,
  Mike

  Posted 21 years ago #

• Jim Matthews Administrator

  Those are great suggestions -- thanks!

  Jim Matthews
  Fetch Softworks

  Posted 21 years ago #

• davis157 Member

  I just wanted to provide an URL where more information on ODS-5 syntax can be found:

  http://www.openvms.compaq.com:8000/73final/6536/6536pro_002.html#ods5names_hd

  Posted 21 years ago #

• Jim Matthews Administrator

  Thanks again!

  Jim Matthews
  Fetch Softworks

  Posted 21 years ago #