Re: MAIN PI/PR and parameter

Yet that explanation would contradict the claim about how the change to the parameter to become a 10-byte character variable apparently exhibited the /same/ symptom. Thus if that 32-byte default storage length for a character argument properly describes the origin for the described scenario, then either the means of testing the code\declaration change or the observations of the effects for having properly both implemented and tested that code\declarative change, was flawed.

Having changed the first parameter to type 10A, the argument '/home' would have been passed as the undelimited string "/home....." [where each period represents a blank\space character], for which the effects of the request to "EVAL InputDir" in debug would have been conspicuously different than in the failing scenario, for the lack of any extraneous data being presented. Different enough that one would hope the reviewer should not perceive the effect as having been to "still get the combined values being passed in together", because the EVAL of the first parameter no longer has any extraneous data from the second:

+ + + + + + ....+....1....+....2....+....3....+....4
INPUTDIR = '/home '

Regards, Chuck

On 12 Jun 2013 11:58, Charles Wilt wrote:

assuming you are doing CALL MYPROG ('/home' '3') from the command
line...

You are running into the well known 32-character default length issue
of the command interpreter.

Basically, the system doesn't know '/home' should be placed into a
variable 255 bytes long.

Best fix is to build a command front end which would allow you to
tell the system how big the parm is.

You could pad out the value, but you'd actually need to pad it out to
256 and the 256th character needs to be non-blank. Otherwise the
system trims it back to '/home' and you are back where you started.

On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 2:33 PM, Robert Clay wrote:

<<SNIP>>

d Main PI
d InputDir 255
d InputDays 3

Walking it thru debug, with parm values '/home' and '3', InputDir
shows this:

> EVAL InputDir
INPUTDIR =
....5...10...15...20...25...30...35...40...45...50...55...60
1 '/home 3 '
<<SNIP>>
<<SNIP>> I've changed InputDir to be as small as 10 (which won't
work in practice) but I still get the combined values being passed
in together.

<<SNIP>>