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From: STEINBERGER@KL.SRI.COM.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Language question
Message-ID: <12304422133.12.STEINBERGER@KL.SRI.Com>
Date: Fri, 22-May-87 11:29:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: KL.12304422133.12.STEINBERGER
Posted: Fri May 22 11:29:28 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 23-May-87 10:45:13 EDT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Distribution: world
Organization: The ARPA Internet
Lines: 24

I have a question concerning a problem that Fortran does not handle well.
I would like to write a subroutine that gets as arguments the following:

            (1)  An array
            (2)  The type of array (byte, integer*2, integer*4, real*4, etc.)

In the subroutine I want to write to a file (or otherwise manipulate) data
from the passed array.  Fortran has an obvious problem with data typing.
My (klutzy) solution was to use OTS$MOVE3 to copy the data from ARRAY to
another array of the appropriate data type, then do the write.  Of course
this wastes a fair amount of space for duplicate data, and wastes some time
to move the data bytes to the new array.  But it did work. . . .

I'm a bit rusty in C and Pascal.  Can anyone tell me if either of these
(or another HLL) allows the user to cast an array into an arbitrary type
at runtime and then read/write or otherwise manipulate it as such?  Do I
have to use MACRO to do what I want?  Thanks to all who reply.


-Ric Steinberger
steinberger@kl.sri.com


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