Re: Max length of a VARYING field

Hi Peter,

I haven't had the chance to test this, but wouldn't
pointer = %addr(%subst(MyVaryingField:1))
give you the starting address of the data, without having to worry about the prefix?

No, that'd yield a RNF0341 compile error. Even if it did work, it'd give you the address of the intermediate result rather than the address of the actual data, wouldn't it?

I like the idea of an extra parm for an existing BIF. However, how about %size(xx:*DATA) and %size(xx:*PREFIX)?

I don't want the size of the data, I want the maximum amount of characters that can fit in the variable. The size of the data is already available through %len().

Also, I want the length (the number of characters) in most cases, not the size (number of bytes). Please read my earlier message to Crispin where I explained this already.

By now it should be sinking in (at least it is with me<g>) that %len

> is current length and %size is allocated size.

Exactly why I want %len() rather than %size().

%size() is the number of bytes of memory, and not the number of characters that can be stored. For the alphanumeric data types they're the same, but the other character data types (Graphic, UCS2) they're not because those use two bytes per character. Since I want to know the maximum number of characters, not bytes, I want the length (%len) not the size (%size).