Glen Cole wrote:
 
> Thus, the blank line is "eaten"! Further experimentation shows that
>
>    1. The lines don't have to be blank. After a :RUN, *anything*
>       left over is eaten until the next MPE cmd (leading colon).
>
>    2. This behaviour can be duplicated under MPE/iX 4.0.
 
This is an old feature, from MPE/V and earlier, although you'd be hard
pressed to find where it's explained.  In general, when a program
opens $STDIN[X] in a job stream, explicitly or implicitly, upon
closing the file, $STDIN[X] is flushed until the next apparent MPE
command.
 
This is _only_ true when a program has been run either by an explicit
!RUN command or an implied RUN.  If the program were started via UDC
or command file, this behavior is suppressed.  Thus, if you'd run
SUPRTOOL via UDC instead of !RUN, the blank line _would_ have been
seen by the CI.  This is a good example of why one shouldn't embed
MPE commands in the input stream to a program like SUPRTOOL.  If you'd
used something like:
 
  !CONTINUE
  !RUN SUPRTOOL.PUB.ROBELLE
  [first group of SUPRTOOL commands]
  !SHOWTIME
  [second group of SUPRTOOL commands]
  exit
 
If SUPRTOOL aborts during the execution of the first group of
commands, MPE will flush till it sees the !SHOWTIME and resume
interpretation of CI commands, which will then bomb when it encounters
the second set of SUPRTOOL commands.
 
> I assume that this is a new feature, and I just plain missed the
> announcement.
 
It's a feature, and an old one at that.
 
------------
Randy Medd
Telamon, Inc.