Re: API parameter lengths

>Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 15:56:01 -0500
>From: "Larry Loen" <lwloen@us.ibm.com>
>
>
>Steve Richter wrote:
>
>   So Larry, does the C pgm make a copy of the string before
>   it null terminates it?
>
>I would expect it does.  Remember that to follow the C conventions, the
>"first" parameter (argv[0] in C terms) is the name of the program, so a
>copy is likely anyway since the second parm on main is an array of arrays.
>This would be most unlikely to match the original OS/400 calling
>conventions, which is a series of strings and, possibly, even decimal
>numbers
...
> ...Still, this is why
>I think this is part of why I mentioned (in passing) the command
processor.
>It seems to understand some of these things.

Larry is right that it's the command processor that handles the
the null-termination when a call is made from the command line; I think
it's only for character parameters; I know that numeric parameters are
passed as usual as decimal(15,5), whether or not they get an extra x'00'
tacked onto the end.

What the C pep does is copy the parameters (which are all pointers by
AS/400 convention, no matter what type they point to) to an array of
pointers, starting with an extra pointer to a string containing the
program name.  Then the pep calls 'main' with the argument count and
the array of pointers.  It doesn't mess with what the pointers are
pointing to at all.

Barbara Morris

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