From: seaohveh@hoffmanlabs.invalid   
      
   On 2025-09-05 02:02:09 +0000, Lawrence D´Oliveiro said:   
      
   > Everybody seems to use “MCR «x»” as a shorthand for “RUN   
   > SYS$SYSTEM:«x»”. (Oh, and I think it allows passing command-line   
   > arguments as well.) Does anybody use any of the other capabilities of   
   > MCR? Does anybody even *know* what they are?   
      
   MCR was the path from VAX-11 native into PDP-11/RSX-11 compatibility   
   mode — the integrated support was removed at VAX/VMS V4 and moved into   
   a compatibility mode layered product — and the command incidentally   
   also happened to correctly handle activating native images.   
      
   There was a debate a quarter-century ago about either documenting what   
   that MCR command can do, or undocumenting the MCR command, and the   
   latter (mostly) won and (most of) the documentation for MCR was   
   expunged.   
      
   Given VAX-11 (as differentiated from VAX) is long gone, and given VAX   
   is itself gone, MCR isn't all that useful or capable. Not past its   
   continued ability to also run native images from SYS$SYSTEM.   
      
   The replacement for MCR is automatic foreign commands, using the   
   DCL$PATH logical name.   
      
      
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