Re: Submit a program call

[Scott Klement <c400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Erik,

I guess I don't understand the issue.  What problems does it cause to 
cast the parameters?   Unfortunately, you've run into a limitation of 
the C language.  It expects all of the arguments passed to main() to be 
in a single array...  Which means they all have to be defined as the 
same data type.

I don't really understand the problem, though...   what's wrong with 
doing this?

int main(int argc, char **argv) {

    char *userid, *code;
    int *custno;

    if (argc != 4) {
       fprintf(stderr, "Need 4 parameters!\n");
       exit(1);
    }

    userid = argv[1];
    code   = argv[2];
    custno = (int *)argv[3];

    return do_work(userid, code, *custno);
}

Sure, the casting is slightly cumbersome, but certainly less so than 
writing the main() in another language and binding.  I guess I don't 
understand the complaint...

I would not do anything else in main(), however, besides interpret the 
parameters and then call another routine with them...  Otherwise, things 
start to get too ugly.


Olsson Erik wrote:
> I want to submit a call to a program in batch, and the program needs to take
> a number of parameters.
> If this was an interactive application I'd create the called program as a
> service program, have a prototyped interface for controlling parameters and
> all would be fine.
>
> Any better solutions than having the program called via SBMJOB to have a
> main function and then manually typecast the parms from argv's char * to
> their proper ones (say integers)?
>
> Thanks in advance.