Technical data

SDA Description

7 SDA Command Format

The following sections describe the format of SDA commands and the expressions

you can use with SDA commands.

7.1 General Command Format

SDA uses a command format similar to that used by the DCL interpreter. You

issue commands in this general format:

command-name[/qualiﬁer...] [parameter][/qualiﬁer...] [!comment]

where:

command-name Is an SDA command. Each command tells the utility to perform a

function. Commands can consist of one or more words, and can be

abbreviated to the number of characters that make the command

unique. For example, SH stands for SHOW and SE stands for SET.

/qualiﬁer Modiﬁes the action of an SDA command. A qualiﬁer is always preceded

by a slash (/). Several qualiﬁers can follow a single parameter or

command name, but a slash must precede each. You can abbreviate

qualiﬁers to the shortest string of characters that uniquely identiﬁes

the qualiﬁer.

parameter Is the target of the command. For example, SHOW PROCESS RUSKIN

tells SDA to display the context of the process RUSKIN. The command

EXAMINE 80104CD0;40 displays the contents of 40 bytes of memory,

beginning with location 80104CD0.

When you supply part of a ﬁle speciﬁcation as a parameter, SDA

assumes default values for the omitted portions of the speciﬁcation.

The default device SYS$DISK and default directory are those speciﬁed

in your most recent SET DEFAULT command. See the OpenVMS DCL

Dictionary for a description of the DCL command SET DEFAULT.

!comment Consists of text that describes the command, but this text is not

actually part of the command. Comments are useful for documenting

SDA command procedures. When executing a command, SDA ignores

the exclamation point (!) and all characters that follow it on the same

line.

7.2 Expressions

You can use expressions as parameters for some SDA commands, such as

SEARCH and EXAMINE. To create expressions, you can use any of the following

elements:

• Numerals

• Radix operators

• Arithmetic and logical operators

• Precedence operators

• Symbols

The following sections describe elements other than numerals.

SDA–15