Description of the files

The contents of the ROBAR rule file depend of the archive system used and of the devices supported. For this reason, the contents of the ROBAR rule file illustrated here may differ from the ROBAR rule file shipped. You can also modify the ROBAR rule files to meet your specific requirements, see the section "Modifications in the ROBAR rule files".

Special characters in the files

All messages and actions in the ROBAR rule files must be written in uppercase letters.
The lowercase letters t, m, v, l, s, a, b, r, f, n, z, u and the characters # and / have a special meaning in ROBAR. Wherever they occur in the message files, they are replaced by the text of the BS2000 message. This enables the following variables to be defined:

tttt	TSN
mmmm	Device mnemonic (2- or 4-character MN)
vvvvvv	VSN of the volume
llllllll	Storage location of the volume
ss	Archive system status byte (for manual command input only)
aaaaaaaa	Archive system coordinate, storing position for foreign cartridges, SUBTSN, or other content
bbbbbbbb	Archive system coordinate (for manual command input only), or other content
r	Robot number
ffff	Archive system-response
####	Sequence number of the ROBAR job (used internally)
zzzzzzz	Other information
uuuuuuuuu	Date and time in the format dd/hhmmss
/	Dummy character in message_file for insignificant text positions
iii	Logical input area
eee	Logical output area

Each group of these special characters may appear once only in a message. Successive identical special characters indicate the length of the variable, and the first occurrence of the special character indicates its position in the message.

The lengths of the variables m, v, l, s, a, b, r, f, #, z, u, i, e refer to the archive system commands or inserts of the BS2000 system messages. These lengths must be adhered to (see above).

 

Example

BS2000 message:

NKVT011 TAPE 'A0001K' DISMOUNTED FROM DEVICE 'T0'

Entry in message_file:

:*:MF000: %NKVT011 vvvvvv mmmm

Since the BS2000 message is identified uniquely by the message number NKVT011, certain text positions in ROBAR message can be dispensed with. All character strings consisting of uppercase letters, blanks and special characters are always checked.
In all actions which are executed by ROBAR for this message, the special characters vvvvvv and mmmm are replaced with A0001K and T0 respectively.
The TSN (tttt) is not given in message_file since it is determined internally.