Article 156813 of comp.os.vms:
> To start, have you ever written a DCL procedure to be used my many
> people, only to find someone has turned a DCL verb into a private
> symbol?  I always do the following:
> 
> $   really:=" "
> $   really sort <file> <file>
> $   really purge <file>
>     etc.
> 
> The "really" soaks up symbol substitution.  Its better than SORTx and
> PURGEx, since (this really happened to me) someone used *THESE* as
> symbols so they would not conflict with DCL verbs.
> 
>
I just do a $ SET SYMBOL/SCOPE=(NOLOCAL,NOGLOBAL) at the beginning of 
the command procedure. I've had no problems so far.

Of course, someone could define a symbol that conflicts with the SET 
verb, but it hasn't happed yet...
Barry Winter
Orange County Environmental Management Agency
300 North Flower Street
Santa Ana, CA 92703