DIGITAL Command Language
| Paradigm | imperative |
|---|---|
| Designed by | Digital Equipment Corporation |
| Developer | Digital Equipment Corporation |
| OS | RSX-11, OpenVMS |
| Influenced | |
| Windows PowerShell | |
DIGITAL Command Language (DCL) is the standard command language adopted by most of the operating systems (OSs) that were sold by the former Digital Equipment Corporation (which was acquired by Compaq, which was in turn acquired by Hewlett-Packard). It had its roots in the IAS, TOPS-20, and RT-11 OSs and was implemented as a standard across most of Digital's OSs, notably RSX-11, but took its most powerful form in the OpenVMS OS.
Written when the programming language Fortran was in heavy use, DCL is a scripting language supporting several datatypes, including strings, integers, bit arrays, arrays and booleans, but not floating point numbers. Access to OpenVMS system services (kernel API) is through lexical functions, which perform the same as their compiled language counterparts and allow scripts to get information on system state. DCL includes IF-THEN-ELSE, access to all the Record Management Services (RMS) file types including stream, indexed, and sequential, but unfortunately lacks a DO-WHILE or other looping construct, requiring users to make do with IF and GOTO-label statements instead.
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