What does /ALL qualifier do for SHOW LOGICAL

[Jess Goodman]

Not important, but curiosity makes me ask: What purpose does the SHOW LOGICAL /ALL qualifier have? The documentation states:

/ALL (default)
Indicates that all logical names in the specified logical name tables are to be displayed. If you do not enter the /PROCESS, /JOB, /GROUP, /SYSTEM, or /TABLE qualifier, all logical names in the tables specified by the logical name LNM$DCL_LOGICAL are displayed.

But /ALL is not the default in SHOW.CLD and I can see no differences in using /ALL or /NOALL in any SHOW LOGICAL command I tried.

The SHOW LOGICAL parameter determines what logical names are displayed, and it defaults to *. I'm guessing /ALL is ignored and is just a left-over documentation relic from before SHOW LOGICAL supported wildcards.

And on that subject wouldn't it be nice if F$TRNLNM/SYS$TRNLNM supported wildcards?

[John Gillings]

Jess,

I suspect you're correct. /ALL is one of the common qualifier set for SHOW LOGICAL, and DEASSIGN. I can't see anything in the SHOW LOGICAL sources where it makes a difference.

re: F$TRNLNM wildcards

yes, but it would require a radical change in interface. At the moment one call produces 0 or 1 result. Wild cards would potentially generate multiple results, needing a more complex structure to returned a list, or an F$SEARCH type loop, with all the issues involving stored contexts, multiple search threads, tear down, etc...

It's no longer enough for it to be "nice". You need to show engineering & management enough ROI to have a wish granted.