Right, but these kids don't seem to be. The argument I'm getting is "OK, but even if we pass an explicit length, people will assume the return is null-terminated". I say, "They'll learn"...
On Fri, Jun 28, 2013 at 8:29 PM, Charles Mills <charl...@mcn.org> wrote: > Yes, character arrays and an explicit length. C programmers are quite used > to this, viz. memcpy() etc. > > Charles > > -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On > Behalf Of zMan > Sent: Friday, June 28, 2013 12:53 PM > To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU > Subject: Theology question: Parameter formats > > Suppose you're defining an API, to be callable from multiple languages, > including C. You believe/assume that C will be the most common language on > non-z platforms (probably reasonable, FSVO "reasonable"), but you also need > to be callable on z. > > Would you: > a) Design the API to pass data/length pairs > b) Use null-terminated strings to keep the C people happy, and have to > create some sort of layer for languages like COBOL to keep usage from that > world sane? > > (Yes, I know about z' variables in COBOL, but people aren't used to and in > my experience aren't fond of those. And there are a lot of languages out > there to consider besides COBOL!) > > My contention is that C folks can surely understand the concept of passing > a > length, especially since C validates parameters -- that is, if a C person > might expect to call SOMEFUNCTION(char*, char*) > > and instead the function definition is > SOMEFUNCTION(char*, int*, char*, int*) > they shouldn't exactly be confused. Surely they understand the *concept* of > a length. > > But people are whining: "But this is how C works -- that's what strings > are!". > > How do most other APIs deal with this? I've not really written applications > this century (or, to be honest, the last one) -- always done systems stuff. > > As part of this discussion, I've had the epiphany that people don't > *expect* to be able to call existing code from random languages--they think > there will need to be some kind of shim layer. So they're quite surprised > that as z folks, we expect an API to be callable from pretty well any > language (modulo pathologies like COBOL's inability to do dynamic memory > allocation). > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > -- zMan -- "I've got a mainframe and I'm not afraid to use it" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
