Error activating image

[Antoniov.]

Since the DEFINE command does not have a fully qualified path it becomes context dependent, is my understanding right?

may be true, may be false ...

VMS filesystem has:
device, directory, file with extension.
Device is disk, e.g. DKA0: may be a logical name like SYS$SYSDEVICE:
directory is tree path; in vms directories are written enclosed by square brackets [ ]; e.g. [SYS0.SYSCOMMON] is directory SYSCOMMON under directroy SYS0.
Anye level of file system (device, directory or file) may be redefined by a logical name.
You can type
$ SHO LOG SYS$SYSDEVICE /FULL
to see a system definition of system disk.
$ SHOW LOG SYS$STARTUP /FULL
to see a system definition of directory
$ SHOW LOG SYS$SYLOGIN
to see a system definition of a file.

Every time you refer to a file and you omit some part of it, os take missed part by SET DEF command.
You can understand this concept using F$PARSE funcion.
Type
$ WRITE SYS$OUTPUT F$PARSE("MYFILE")

Sorry for long sentence, but I hope this can help you.

Antonio Vigliotti

[Antoniov.]

Ram,
to check your first post:
$ define /nolog CLD$EXE disk51:[USER.VMSUSER]
$ write sys$output f$parse("testcli.cld")

Antonio Vigliotti

[Dale A. Marcy]

Antonio stated: "Every time you refer to a file and you omit some part of it, os take missed part by SET DEF command."

There is one instance where this is not the case, and that is when specifying a log file on a submit command. In that case at least the disk portion (can't remember about the directory) is taken from the translation of Sys$Login. I recently was trying to track down a problem where a user's submit command stopped working after moving to a new system. It was because they were using [.sub_dir] for the /Log=. On the old system, their login directory was on the same disk as the [.sub_dir], so it worked. On the new system their login directory was on a different disk than the [.sub_dir] and it did not work.