Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!ubc-cs!van-bc!nvanbc!lawrenc
From: lawrenc@nvanbc.UUCP (Lawrence Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: old prompt question which I never saw answered.
Summary: My understanding is that VMS QIO prompts on the input channel
Message-ID: <519@nvanbc.UUCP>
Date: 29 Jun 88 07:15:03 GMT
References: <8806280841.AA18214@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Organization: Lawrence Harris, N.Vancouver, B.C., CANADA, V7R2E8
Lines: 16


In response to the reply on where the prompts go.  I had exactly this
question some time ago and after some research I came to the conclusion
that when you issue a $QIO with prompt, that VMS actually writes to the
input channel.  It really has no choice since you can't specify an
output channel to prompt on.  What happens to the prompt is therefore
device specific.  On a terminal it actually writes the prompt out, on
mailboxes the option to prompt is simply ignored.

What DCL needs is another i/o device SYS$PROMPT however I think that
would mess up the command line refresh and related stuff.
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