Command

A command is a directive to the computer to perform a certain task. There is a set of commands available in every programming language including DCL. An example of a DCL command is DIRECTORY.

DCL Commands

A list of DCL commands is available here and in the OpenVMS Help Utility. The following features are provided by DCL:

• command abbreviation: commands can be abbreviated to 4 characters or more
• command normalization: DCL will remove all comments, trailing, leading, and double spaces, and translate all characters to uppercase before accepting the command

Upon accepting a command, the CLI parses it and either executes it or invokes the respective image.

See also

• DCL command line elements
• Commands executed inside DCL (that do not invoke an image)