Re: pointer arguments in procedures

On Tue, 3 Jan 2006, Scott Klement wrote:

> If you want any size variable to be used as input, add options(*varsize)
> to the prototype, and it'll allow any size variable to be passed.
> However, if you do that, be very careful not to refer to the memory beyond
> what the caller passed in, or you'll be looking at memory that doesn't
> belong to you.

I tried this, but it wasn't clear to me what size to specify on the
options(*varsize) argument. I wanted it to be variable size, so why was I
having to specify a size? When I specified 1 for the size, it seemed as
though (in the debugger) that the data passed in was 1 character long.
When I specified 32K - 1 as the size, the variable appeared as though it
was 32K, filled with junk from memoryland, and neither %size nor %length
(used within the called procedure) was returning the actual intended size
of the data. I think %size thought it was 32K. I can't remember what
%length thought. Thanks.