Extracting messages from executable message files

[Darran Burt]

Ages ago there was a freeware utility called UNMESSAGE which would read and dump out the contents of any message file.

Anyone know of an up-to-date version of this, or perhaps another way of getting them?

Thanks,
Darran.

[Ian Miller.]

UNMESSAGE can be found here
http://vms.process.com/scripts/fileserv/fileserv.com?UNMESSAGE

[Karl Rohwedder]

When I use the above link and click on UNMESSAGE.ZIP, I get the error message 550 directory not found.

You can find UNMESSAGE also on:
http://www.tmk.com/ftp/vms-freeware/fileserv/unmessage.zip

[Ian Miller.]

curious - the link works for me. Its still not a recent version (built on VMS V5.1) but possibly the most up to date you are going to get.

[Hein van den Heuvel · Accepted solution]

I have a brute-force script which might do what you need. Call it with the target message facility as argument. Do a "SET MESSAGE " to the target file before the run.
You may want to dump the target file block 2 to confirm the numeric values of the messages.

Good luck,
Hein.


$if p1 .eqs. "" then exit
$fac = "%" + p1
$i=0
$loop:
$!write sys$output f$fao("!XL ",i), f$message(i,"facility")
$if fac .eqs. f$message(i,"facility") then goto mess
$i = i + %x10000
$if i.lt.%x0FFF0000 then goto loop
$exit
$mess:
$write sys$output "Message for ''fac' start at: ", f$fao("!XL",i)
$end = i + %x10000
$i = i + %x8000
$loop:
$if f$mess(i,"ident").nes."%NOMSG" then -
write sys$output f$fao("!XL ",i), f$message(i)
$i = i + 8
$if i.lt.end then goto loop


For example:

>@mess_fac vvief
Message for %VVIEF start at: 03300000
03308050 %VVIEF-W-BADHEADER, emulator image has bad header
03308058 %VVIEF-W-BADLOGIC, failed to translate logical name '!AS'
03308060 %VVIEF-W-MERGEERR, failed to activate image '!AS'
:

[Darran Burt]

Well I got the zipfile and eventually got it to build on alpha (too much messing around on HSGs!) but it only signals abort or stack dumps!

Anyone got an alpha build version? :-)

Thanks,
Darran.

[Hein van den Heuvel]

>> , or perhaps another way of getting them?

Did my brute-force script not work for you?

Hein.

[Darran Burt]

I did try your procedure first, but it didn't seem to work on my system (not sure why). So I changed it to dump out *every* message to a file for a specific facility...

Not the most elegant way but at least its effective! :-)

Many Thanks,
Darran.