From: bear@nuc.anu.edu.au (Bernhard Fabricius)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: Help needed on Uppercase in a batchfile
Date: 5 Jan 1993 04:15:50 GMT
Organization: Nuclear Physics, ANU
Distribution: world
Reply-To: BEAR@NUC.ANU.EDU.AU
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In article <1993Jan4.204413.2561@merrimack.edu>, finocchiaroj@merrimack.eduwrites:
>Path: manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!hri.com!noc.near.net!merrimack.edu!finocchiaroj
>From: finocchiaroj@merrimack.edu
>Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
>Subject: Help needed on Uppercase in a batchfile
>Message-ID: <1993Jan4.204413.2561@merrimack.edu>
>Date: 4 Jan 93 20:44:13 GMT
>Organization: Merrimack College, No. Andover, MA, USA
>Lines: 12
>
>I have a question on whether there is a Uppercase function that you can use for
>a batchfile, or is there an escape sequence to turn on Capslock. For example
>say this is a batchfile:

[I presume you mean "commandfile" when you say "batchfile" - not much point in
asking for user input when running in batch!]

>	
>	$ inquire/nopuct "enter your name: "
>	
>And you want the user to type in his name like this JASON and not like jason
>I would appreciate any info on this.

Pull your self together! Couldn't you at least test if you have a problem
before you post ? If you had tried it out you would have discovered that
INQUIRE is a DCL function that always returns TRIMMed, COMPRESSed, UNCOMMENTed
and UPperCASEd strings (see below for what that means!)

But your syntax is wrong - may I suggest that you use HELP INQUIRE (here is an
extract copyright (C) Digital Equipment Corp etc):

1  INQUIRE
   Reads a value from SYS$COMMAND (usually the terminal in
   interactive mode or the next line in the main command procedure)
   and assigns it to a symbol.

   Format

     INQUIRE  symbol-name [prompt-string]

(etc etc - really is exciting reading!)

It is READ that takes whatever you type - case, spaces, tabs and all.

As to your question wheter there is an "Uppercase function": Once more, RTFM!
Here is an extract from the FM (again copyright (C) Digital Equipment Corp etc)
(HELP LEXICALS F$EDIT...):

1  Lexicals
   A set of functions that return information about character strings
   and attributes of the current process.

2  F$EDIT
   Edits the character string based on the edits specified in the
   edit-list argument.

   Format

     F$EDIT(string, edit-list )

3  Return_Value
   A character string containing the specified edits.

3  string
   Specifies a character string to be edited. Quoted sections of the
   string are not edited.

3  edit-list
   Specifies a character string containing one or more of the
   following keywords which specify the types of edits to be made
   to the string. If you specify more than one keyword, separate them
   with commas (,).  Do not abbreviate these keywords.

   Edit           Action

   COLLAPSE       Removes all spaces or tabs.

   COMPRESS       Replaces multiple spaces or tabs with a single
                  space.

   LOWERCASE      Changes all uppercase characters to lowercase.

   TRIM           Removes leading and trailing spaces or tabs.

   UNCOMMENT      Removes comments.

   UPCASE         Changes all lowercase characters to uppercase.

   Edits are not applied to quoted sections of strings. Therefore,
   if a string contains quotation marks (" "),  the characters within
   the quotation marks are not affected by the edits specified in the
   edit list.

Need I say more ? 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Bernhard Fabricius              |
Academic VAX/VMS Support           |  "I am a Bear of Very Little Brain,
Department of Nuclear Physics      |           and long words Bother me."
Australian National University     |
                                   |                           - A.A. Milne
InterNet: BEAR@NUC.ANU.EDU.AU      |
    POSTMASTER@NUC.ANU.EDU.AU      |

Newsgroups: comp.os.vms