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DCL

DCL (Digital Command Language) is the shell command language use by OpenVMS?

I recently got back to working on OpenVMS? after many years away from it, here is some useful stuff.

To run something that isn't referenced by a symbol (such as a script) use an @ in front of the script/prog name

Set Def [path] - sets the default directory - this has a similar effect to CD on Unix/DOS but doe not check the directory. What is does is set the value of an enironment variable which is automatically prefixed to any directory commands. PATH can be made up of LOGICAL:[Directory.Subdirectory]filename.ext
References on the same logical/drive do not need the "LOGICAL:" part
[Directory.Subdirectory] is an abolute path from the root - root is [000000] - yes that's 6 zeros!
[.Directory.Subdirectory] is relative (i.e. a subdirectory of the current default directory)

Set Def [-] - move up a directory level ( similar to cd ..)

Sho sym name | wildcard - shows symbol (* shows all) a symbol is like an environment variable

Sho Log name | wildcard - shows logicals, logicals are ways of referencing Disks and directories, use this if you want to know what physical location a particular logical points to

Dir [...] - lists contents of all subdirectories, the [...] is similar to ** in Unix and can be use with other commands such as Search

Search - find files, need I say more. Use /win=5 to list 5 lines around the match

dir/nohe/notr/out=files.lis *.* - dump a directory listing to a file

Defining logicals use
define build$source DISK$USER:[CODE.SOURCES]