DECC$features question

[Brian Schenkenberger, VAXman-]

I have created a callable Perl routine. I need to have the DECC$feature
DECC$FILENAME_UNIX_REPORT enabled for Excel::Writer::XLSX to for proper
functioning.

Why does calling DECC$FEATURE_SET to establish DECC$FILENAME_UNIX_REPORT
not cause Perl to use/see this feature setting but the definition of the
DECC$FILENAME_UNIX_REPORT logical does?

--
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG

I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.

[Craig A. Berry]

On Nov 03, 2015, at 08:01 AM, "Brian Schenkenberger, VAXman-" <sys...@TMESIS.COM> wrote:

I have created a callable Perl routine. I need to have the DECC$feature
DECC$FILENAME_UNIX_REPORT enabled for Excel::Writer::XLSX to for proper
functioning.

Why does calling DECC$FEATURE_SET to establish DECC$FILENAME_UNIX_REPORT
not cause Perl to use/see this feature setting but the definition of the
DECC$FILENAME_UNIX_REPORT logical does?

I understand why it doesn't work but I'm not sure what to do about it.  At start-up time, via a LIB$INITIALIZE psect, we capture feature settings from the environment and/or set some defaults.  For certain features, we save the setting in a global variable.  Here's where the setting of DECC$FILENAME_UNIX_REPORT is stored:

http://perl5.git.perl.org/perl.git/blob/HEAD:/vms/vms.c#l14044

I think part of the reason for this was so we don't have to call decc$feature_get all over the place to check the setting, but I also think at one time we supported some features in Perl that older CRTLs didn't (yet) have.  John Malmberg designed all this and at one time planned to have a VMS::Feature Perl module that would allow you to get and set these features, but he never implemented it.

So I think the only choice right now is to get the setting in the environment before Perl starts up.

[Brian Schenkenberger]

Yeah, I wasn't going to let this delay the project any longer than it's
already been. I left the DECC$FEATURE_SET in the code but I also do a
SYS$CRELNM to create a user mode definition of DECC$FILENAME_UNIX_REPORT
translating to ENABLED.