Re: Refresh my memory: is there some sort of unstructured object that's cheap to create, and can automatically expand?

Hi, James:

Do you really need to create an object (e.g. *USRSPC) to store your data? In
OPM MI, you can easily declare a "space" in the program, e.g.:

          DCL SPCPTR XPTR   AUTO;
          DCL SPC    XDATA  BAS(XPTR);
          DCL DD INCR   BIN(  4) AUTO BDRY(4) ;
            . . .
          MODASA     XPTR, INCR;    /* extend size of space ... */

And of course you can pass a space pointer that points into this space, just
as you might do with passing a pointer into the *USRSPC...

Or, perhaps you should consider using the ILE heap (which can also be used
by OPM programs)? e.g.:

    CRTHS       HEAPID, ?X;
    ALCHSS      ?HEAP, HEAPID, Y;

This approach lets you easily suballocate using ALCHSS, rather than having
to manage the space yourself (as you would with a *USRSPC). Also, at
end-of-job (or end of activation group), OS/400 cleans up and deletes the
heap automatically.

HTH,

Regards,

Mark S. Waterbury

----- Original Message -----
> From: "James H H Lampert" <jamesl@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <mi400@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Friday, December 16, 2005 7:50 PM
> Subject: [MI400] Refresh my memory: is there some sort of unstructured
object that's cheap to create, and can automatically expand?
>

> I'm looking to stick something in QTEMP to accumulate a
> bunch of data, and pass it from OPM MI to ILE C, and I
> have this vague memory that there's some sort of object
> that would be perfect for the job. Something that would
> automatically expand as needed to fit the data, without
> any need to explicitly expand it, and that would be cheap
> to create. I'd only require FIFO access.
>
> Am I thinking of something legitimate that I'd forgotten
> the name of, and can't find? Or am I just going
> prematurely senile?
>
> --
> JHHL
>