Still unsurpassed (DCL is) by any UNIX shell, or the pitiful shell in Windows.
The best (bar none!) CLI user interface I ever used was NOS/VE’s CCL (Cyber Control Language). CDC had adopted the best of VMS and hybridized it with the best of UNIX.
Unfortunately, NOS/VE was expensive (like VMS) proprietary (like VMS) and only ran on one hardware platform (like VMS) but didn’t have ANY userbase UNlike VMS which was everywhere.
Oh, yeah, it had file cycles like VMS. You mess up “DATA01.DAT” you can just copy “DATA01.DAT.1” over it and start over. Nowadays, everybody seems to use snapshot directories, but that’s is not as robust...
(/end `Grandpa Simpson’ mode)
VMS had a multi-version file system, called RMS, what 40 years ago? Up to 32 versions allowed, user set version limit - we set it to 3, as I remember. Today, the only multi-version file systems are those with Version Control systems such as ClearCase and Perforce, and Lord, they are so unwieldy and resource intensive.
CCL sounds real interesting.