> Tony Knowles wrote:
> Devtool seems to hang if there is no tape loaded.  Break and abort
> or abortjob fixes it but that wasn't quite what I had in mind.

MPEX's %devcontrol and, I believe, Allegro's ONLINE do the same.
So this is what I do...

run MPEX.PUB.VESOFT
comment - check LDEV 7 and place online or abort
showdev 7
goon devcontrol 7;online
pause 90
comment ----------------
repeat
comment  to find GOON output file
         setvar veou_file = "![RFILE.FILE]"
forfiles VEOU@:temp
if veftempinfo("!veou_file").opened
comment  then devcontrol was unsuccessful eg tape not loaded
comment ?kill ![str("!veou_file",5,4)]
comment  kill will enable MPEX to exit gracefully
         exit
comment  exiting while child is active
comment  sets JCW FATAL and flushes remainder of job
endif

If I am reading Hans-Ole Kaae's chktape scripts properly (too lazy to
actually test it), it parses the output from :SHOWDEV.  Output from the
:SHOWDEV command may, however, be incorrect if the tape has been
manually ejected after it was originally loaded and before it has been
opened/accessed by a program.