The ASK program is used in our SYSTARTUP file to ask
such questions as "Do you want to bring up DECnet?", etc.
We needed a timeout/default answer equivalent to INQUIRE and
this filled the bill.

It could be used as follows:

$ASK:==$ASK					! assuming in sys$system
$ASK/TIMEOUT=8/DEFAULT=NO ANSWER "Question? "
$SHOW SYMBOL ANSWER
 ANSWER = "NO"					! assuming no answer and
						! timeout after 8 seconds