10.3 Filename Modifiers (C Shell Only)

Filename modifiers cause the system to return portions of an absolute or relative filename, as defined in Table 10.3. OpenVMS users familiar with the F$PARSE lexical function, which calls the $PARSE RMS service for extracting portions of a file specification, can achieve similar results using a shell script with filename modifiers. UNIX has no direct way of modifying filenames on a remote UNIX computer. Compare the OpenVMS command F$PARSE(file-spec ... "NODE"). However, as we shall see in Section 13.2.7, you can pipe a remote file lookup to a filename modifier to return portions of the filename, but not the remote host name.

In the example below, which illustrates the use of the filename modifiers outlined in Table 10.3. We are reading a filename entered on the command line and breaking it up into the component parts of the file's name, type (extension), directory, and finally the file-spec minus the directory. In the OpenVMS example, notice that we enter just the filename PROGRAM.C without any directory name. The F$PARSE is able automatically to...