Using Absolute File Specifications with panpr





Products	Support	Download	Contact

USING ABSOLUTE FILE SPECIFICATIONS WITH `panpr`

Contents | Index | About the Icons

Abstract

The ScriptServer® PAN Printing System (PAN) command line print job submission tool, panpr, can misinterpret absolute file specifications as unknown command qualifiers.

For Historical Reasons, `panpr` accepts qualifiers started with "/" as well as with "-"

GrayMatter Software has been selling its (DEC/Compaq/HP) OpenVMS printing product for many years. A component of that product is the SCRIPT command, which is a replacement for the standard PRINT command with many additional output features. The panpr command is analogous to the SCRIPT command, in fact most of the qualifiers are identical.

On OpenVMS, command qualifiers start with "/", not the "-" which is common on Unix-like operating systems. So, the panpr command accepts both... and as a consequence it can suffer confusion when it sees a file specified as an absolute path.

Examples

In the following examples we will assume the following:

working directory: /home/joe

file to be printed: /var/data/reports/list.txt

Using a relative path

Both of these will work, because the path to the file is specified with relative (no leading "/") syntax:

panpr /queue=Maven ../../var/data/reports/list.txt

panpr -queue=Maven ../../var/data/reports/list.txt

Using an absolute path

Using an absolute path, one of the following will work and one will not.

fails...

This one fails, because after seeing the qualifier which begins with a "/", panpr assumes anything beginning with "/" is a qualifier:

panpr /queue=Maven /var/data/reports/list.txt

succeeds...

This one succeeds, because the qualifier begins with a "-", and so panpr assumes that the "/" introduces a file name:

panpr -queue=Maven /var/data/reports/list.txt

working directory:	`/home/joe`
file to be printed:	`/var/data/reports/list.txt`

USING ABSOLUTE FILE SPECIFICATIONS WITH panpr