The Stack

The Stack is an internal buffer where commands are automatically placed. It may be considered as a real time logfile, from which you can retrieve commands. The stack buffer may contain up to 300 commands, less if the commands are very long. It is organized as a circulating buffer, with a "first in - first out" replacement procedure when the buffer is full, or when the maximum number of commands is reached. The command number always increase, even when the buffer fills up.

The command

        RECALL [Arg]

recalls command from the stack for execution. Depending on whether line editing mode is possible (see keypad line editing), the recalled command may be edited prior to submission, or not. If no argument is present, the last command is recalled. If the argument is a number N, the N-th command of the stack is recalled. If the argument is a string, the stack is scanned backwards to find a command beginning by this string.

If line editing is possible, commands may also be retrieved from the stack using the Up and Down arrows on the terminal keyboard. However to bypass VMS line editing, you must strike GOLD (<PF1>) key first.

The command

        EDIT

without arguments will dump the stack on a file named STACK.DefExt (where DefExt is the current default procedure extension), and calls the default editor to edit this file. It can then be executed as any other procedure.