VMS Filenames and extensions

[Angel_40]

Is it possible to create a file in VMS, which does not contain an file extension nor the "."
character?

e.g. $ rename afile.txt afile

If so, please provide required syntax,

Thanks,

Angel

[Travis Craig]

I'm not sure what you can do with ods-5, but the "." is an implicit part of the file specification in the regular VMS file system. You can have a blank extension and an blank name, but you'll always have the dot.

--Travis Craig

[Ian Miller.]

$ rename afile.txt afile.
would get you a file called afile. which is
as close as you get on ODS2.

[comarow]

It will always have the period.

You can call it anything, but it will have a period.

for example. rename Sam.txt sam
you'll have sam.

There's no getting rid of the period.

Bob

[Jan van den Ende]

Angel,

the syntax of a file in VMS describes it (ignoring dir spec for this purpose) as dot semicolon
Where , , and are under your control (within their acceptable domains).
However, the dot ( . ) and semicolon ( ; ) are just part of the formal syntax.
No way to get around that.
Various commands have various ways of completing any parts of the file syntax on a command line, but you WILL always deal with a complete syntax, which the OS will always use in any action, response, or display.

It _IS_ possible for name and/or version to be null-strings, but the version will ALWAYS be an integer between 1 and 32767

But,
WHAT is the background of your question? WHAT are you trying to achieve?

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe

[Antoniov.]

Angel,
welcome to vms forum :-)
you received full answers to your question. Just for curiosity, why you need blinding dot char?

Antonio Vigliotti

[John Gillings · Accepted solution]

You guys just aren't thinking in OpenVMS! Of COURSE you can have a file name without .'s or semicolons:

$ DEFINE afile afile.txt

now you have the name "afile" which will refer to your file. It's not persistent, and might not scale very well, but that wasn't specified in the problem description :-)

[Eberhard Wacker]

Exactly as John said: using a logical is the usual way to access files without the need to enter any valid expression of an RMS file including brackets and dots and does have the advantage of shortening.
$ t f !sure that's overdone
can bé equivalent to
$ type/page=save=5 dev:[dir1.dir2.dir3.dir4]filnam.ext;v

And there are some DCL commands which handle a special extension as default.
So e.g. TYPE AFILE acts as TYPE AFILE.LIS and @AFILE acts as @AFILE.COM

Cheer

[Mobeen_1]

John,
My compliments, you have out-thought many of us :)
I am cursing myself for not having thought on the same lines as you.
At least on a daily basis i used the "define" command 10-15 times :)

regards
Mobeen

[Angel_40]

First, I want to thank each expert who has replied.

So the original goal (using OSD-5) is to transfer the file to a NFS mounted device
shared by UNIX which does not include the
dot using rename command to eliminate it. (the dot)

I'm not sure if the logical assignment will work, but I give it a shot.

Any other great ideas/methods for ODS-5 mounted volumes?