Navigation: System Commands

SEND

Updated and reviewed August 2020

SEND {switches} <target> <message>

SEND delivers <message> to one or all other jobs on the system.

switches

 

If you use switches /T or /B and the applicable status line is not enabled on the target terminal, the message will not be displayed anywhere.

target

may be either the job name or the login user name of the person to whom you want to send a message. "ALL" or "TODOS" or "TOUS" will send a message to all users. Use SYSTAT to see which job and user names are available.

message

any text message or, if /F switch is specified, a filename.

Unix

Under Unix, SEND is implemented via the operating system’s signal delivery system. If the target is running PolyShell, then the message will appear in a pop-up window. Otherwise, the message will simply appear at the current screen cursor location, overwriting whatever was there previously.

Because of Unix security rules, it is impossible for one user to send signals to another unless the first user has superuser privileges, or unless they are both sharing the same effective user ID. See File Ownership and Privileges for instructions on achieving this.

Windows

Under Windows, SEND is implemented using the "Inter Job Communication" (IJC) system, which was introduced in A-Shell 4.6. Unless the /T or /B switch is specified, the message is displayed in an independent pop-up window using the awmsg.exe utility which is distributed with A-Shell. The message window initially appears on top of all other windows, and does not interfere with the target A-Shell window in any way.

Also under Windows, SEND may take a few seconds for the sent message to be received. The reason for the relatively slow reaction is that the IJC system sends messages between jobs by way of the JOBTBL, which depends on each job checking it's own entry every few seconds. The time period is configurable somewhat via the IJCFREQ system parameter; the optimum appears to be somewhere in the range of 5 seconds, which makes it tolerable in the case of SEND and other commands dependent on it, such as SYSTAT/W and JSTAT, yet not creating an intolerable amount of useless overhead.

Example

The command

.SEND /F ALL CUSTO 

queries all other jobs to see if they have a file named CUSTO—any directory or file extension—open. This can be a convenient alternative to the use of OS-level utilities to figure out which job is preventing your job from gaining access to a needed file resource.

History

2020 July, A-Shell 6.5.1688, SEND.LIT 2.3(125):  New /F switch allows querying one or all jobs to see which have a specified file open.

2015 May, A-Shell 6.1.1408, SEND.LIT 2.2B(123):  Updated routine to recognize and preserve a new unique identifer field in the JOBTBL. The new version is backward compatible with earlier versions of A-Shell and has a "B" in the version number to help easily identify it.

2011 September, A-Shell 5.1.1235:  Minor adjustment to drop the sending job name from the message (in order to allow more space for the message itself, since part of that space was taken over for the new expanded program name.)

Subtopics

•SENDing to ATE