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A-Shell Reference

A-Shell typically recognizes two types of filespecs: it’s own DevPPN filespecs and those native to the host operating system.

DevPPN filespecs have the form:

{device:}filename{.ext}{[p,pn]}

DevPPN filenames consist of 1-72 RAD50 characters (A-Z, 0-9 plus $ and dash). Spaces are not allowed. DevPPN filenames are not case sensitive, but in the Unix environment are mapped to lower case native filespecs.

Extensions can be from 0 to 8 RAD50 characters. Multiple extensions are not allowed.

Optionally, the order of the parts can be changed to put the [p,pn] in front of the filename, e.g. DSK3:[100,200]ABC.DAT

Within ASB programs, file I/O statements recognize and accept both DevPPN and native filespecs.

At the command prompt, filespecs used in System Commands are expected to be in DevPPN format. But many commands, including all of the wildcard commands, will allow you to specify a native filespec by enclosing it in quotes. For example:

.COPY HOSTS.TXT="/etc/hosts" /NOD

 

.TYPE "/etc/hosts"

 

.SIZE "c:\vm\miame\bin\ashw32.exe"

 

.DIR HASH.DIR="/vm/miame/bin/ashell" /H

 

When using quoted native filespecs, you cannot use wildcards.