HELP PURGE                                      Steven Hardy, March 1982
                                                 Aaron Sloman, July 1982
                                    Revised John Williams, November 1992

The VED command <ENTER> PURGE can be used to selectively delete old or
unwanted files. First, type

    <ENTER> purge

This uses the DCL command "DIRECTORY" to produce a new temporary VED
file listing all the files in the current directory, one per line,
something like this:

    FEE.;1                    1  17-NOV-1992 12:50:40.46
    FIE.;1                    1  17-NOV-1992 12:51:27.98
    FOE.;1                    1  17-NOV-1992 12:51:38.58

Put an asterisk IN FRONT OF each file you no longer want, i.e. mark the
files to be deleted with an asterisk at the BEGINNING of the line. So if
you want to delete "fee" and "foe", your directory listing should look
like:

    *FEE.;1                    1  17-NOV-1992 12:50:40.46
    FIE.;1                    1  17-NOV-1992 12:51:27.98
    *FOE.;1                    1  17-NOV-1992 12:51:38.58

Then type:

    <ENTER> del

This will convert all the lines with asterisks to DCL "DELETE" commands,
and remove the other lines from the file. So your file will now look
like:

    DELETE FEE.;1
    DELETE FOE.;1

If you are sure you have marked the right files, then type

    <ENTER> dodcl

and the "DELETE" commands will be obeyed.


Purging after "DISK QUOTA EXCEEDED" errors
------------------------------------------

The <ENTER> PURGE command does not create any temporary disk files, and
is therefore safe to use after receiving a "DISK QUOTA EXCEEDED" error.

Also, note that if a "DISK QUOTA EXCEEDED" error occurs while writing a
file, VED does ___not leave half-written copies of the file lying around,
which means that you will probably want to keep the "top" copy of that
file.


Purging selected files
----------------------

The <ENTER> PURGE command will accept any of the formats which the DCL
"DIRECTORY" command will accept, which means that you can use "wild
cards" in filename specifications. So, for example, if you only wish to
purge your Pop-11 program files, type

    ENTER purge *.p

and then mark the unwanted files with '*' as before, followed by <ENTER>
DEL and <ENTER> DODCL, as described above.


Related Files
-------------

HELP * DCL              General introduction to DCL for Poplog users
TEACH * FILES           General introduction to the notion of "files"

HELP * DIR              Documentation for LIB * VED_DIR
LIB * VED_DIR           VED interface to the DCL "DIRECTORY" command


--- C.vms/help/purge
--- Copyright University of Sussex 1992. All rights reserved. ----------
