Foreign Commands

$ vbl := $filespec[ param[ param[ …]]]

“filespec” defaults to SYS$SYSTEM:.EXE

Maximum string length is 510 bytes.

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A “foreign command” is a special case where a symbol can be interpreted by DCL as verb. The value of the symbol can include qualifiers and/or parameters in addition to the file specification of the executable file.

If necessary, foreign commands can be defined using quoted strings if, for example, the case of an argument or embedded spaces within an argument needs to be preserved.

Using symbol substitution, strings of up to 1024 bytes can be constructed.