There is now long experience with the PL/I convention that assigns a source string that is longer than the [maximal allocated or declared] length of the target string with 1) truncation on the right and 2) silently.
It works well, at least where it is understood. Complaints about it among PL/I programmers have not occurred with any interesting frequency. I am happy that Peter Relson notes that the adoption of just this convention is being considered for system symbols. About Peter's other reactions to my posts I have only one comment. I am a sworn enemy of the C nul-delimited string of "conceptually unlimited length ". I am not an enemy but rather a friend of the halfword [or, in principle, fullword] current-length prefixed, i.e., PL/I character varying, string, that may have any length L in the interval 0 <= L <= X, where X is the allocated or declared maximal length and for halfword prefixes X <= 2^15 - 1 = 32767. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
