Re: Command CHOICEPGM

[Douglas Handy <dhandy1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mark,

>My question is:  What is the 'P' type for (position 21 of the first 
>parm)?  

It tells you to return the (P)ermissible values in the second parm, as opposed
to C which denotes you need to return the (C)hoice text for the regular command
panel.

For C, return a simple string such as 'Character value, F4=Prompt' or whatever.

For P, you return a string list, with the first 2-bytes being a binary count of
the number of values returned in the list.  Then for each string, you include a
2-byte binary length prefix followed by that many bytes of text, then the next
length prefix and another string, etc.

The documented limit for the size of the values passed back is 2000 bytes, with
each string having a maximum size of 34 bytes.

>Is that what a Prompt Override Program is for?

No, POP's are completely unrelated to choice programs.  POPs are used to provide
actual values for some parms after certain "key" parms are known.  They were
added back around V1R2 or so because so many people didn't want to see *SAME
when prompting a CHGxxx command -- they wanted to see the current value.

So "key" parms and POPs were introduced so it would first prompt for the key
parm(s), then the POP could retrieve associated values and supply them as the
default on the subsequent prompt panel.

Doug