Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!uflorida!umd5!umbc3!kend
From: kend@umbc3.UMD.EDU (Ken Dahl)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: Passing strings from Cobol to Pascal
Message-ID: <1089@umbc3.UMD.EDU>
Date: 18 Jul 88 22:46:11 GMT
References: <3744@enea.se>
Reply-To: kend@umbc3.UMD.EDU (Ken Dahl)
Organization: University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Lines: 21

In article <3744@enea.se> sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
>The scene: I have several Cobol modules that call this same Pascal
>module. Thus, all tricks should be on the Pascal side.    
>  All Cobol modules have the same appearance, only the contents of 
>the strings vary beside a message code. Basically I want to write:
>     CALL "Pascal_routine" USING                Specific_msg_code, 
>                                 BY <mechanism> "specific text" 
>                           GIVING Ret_status
>and a Pascal declaration like: 
>     (. Global .) 
>     FUNCTION Pascal_routine(    Code : integer;
>                             VAR Str  : VARYING(.$len.) OF char) : integer;

The mechanism you want to use in the COBOL Call statement is DESCRIPTOR.
In the Pascal function declaration, you should add %REF before CODE since
COBOL passes arguments by REFERENCE by default, and add %STRDESCR before
STR since the string will be passed by descriptor.


For more help, you can check the COBOL (section 6) and Pascal (section 7)
reference manuals.