Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!guido
From: guido@cwi.nl (Guido van Rossum)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Changing a menu using a resource
Message-ID: <325@piring.cwi.nl>
Date: 17 May 88 16:40:38 GMT
References: <346@manta.NOSC.MIL> <4602@husc6.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: guido@cwi.nl (Guido van Rossum)
Organization: The Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Amoebae
Lines: 25

In article <4602@husc6.harvard.edu> stew@endor.UUCP (Stew Rubenstein) writes:
>	theHandle = GetResource ('STR ', OFFID);
>	HLock (theHandle)
>	SetItem (albertMenu, albertHerman, (StringPtr) *theHandle);
>	HPurge (theHandle);
>
>One other thing to worry about, depending on what development system
>you're using - SetItem may expect a C string (null-terminated) and
>GetResource returns a handle to a Pascal string (count byte prefixed).
>LightSpeed C does it right - SetItem expects a P string so the code
>above is correct.  The standard MPW interfaces do this silly
>conversion, so you have to PtoCstr(*theHandle); before and
>CtoPstr(*theHandle) after the SetItem.

There's a toolbox function called (I believe) GetString which does
just this (retrieve a 'STR ' resource by ID) and is matched with the
string convention of each compiler's toolbox interface.  If I remember
it well it doesn't return a handle but stores the string in a 256-byte
buffer you pass, which saves the locking and purging of the handle.

BTW, in MPW it's p2cstr, not PtoCstr.
--
Guido van Rossum, Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI), Amsterdam
guido@piring.cwi.nl or mcvax!piring!guido or guido%piring.cwi.nl@uunet.uu.net
...unvoluntary LSC/MPW porting expert...