Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!killer!ames!mailrus!ukma!rutgers!soleil!geigel
From: geigel@soleil.UUCP (jogle)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: Help with VAX Pascal
Summary: It's not pretty.
Message-ID: <421@soleil.UUCP>
Date: 11 Oct 88 20:55:50 GMT
References: <5900@june.cs.washington.edu> <5214@juniper.uucp> <1096@leah.Albany.Edu>
Organization: somewhere over the rainbow
Lines: 66

In article <1096@leah.Albany.Edu>, bbw842@leah.Albany.Edu (Barry B Werger) writes:
> 
> Does anyone know how to receive a command-line parameter in VAX Pascal?

   
     Actually, this is a problem in VAX Pascal. We figured out a solution 
     but it's certainly far from clean.  We use the VAX system routine
     lib$get_foreign.  A sample piece of code using this might look like:

         
     [inherit ('sys$library:starlet.pen')] 

     program moo;

     type	
       string80 = packed array [1..80] of char;
       string25 = packed array [1..25] of char;
       w_integer = [WORD]0..32767;

     var
       command_Line: string80;
       prompt: string25;    (* prompt if no command line is given *)
       status: unsigned;
       length: w_integer;   (* Length of command line returned *)
       x: integer;          (* Determines if prompting is to be done *)

    [EXTERNAL]function  lib$get_foreign (%stdescr in_line : string80;
                                         %stdescr prompt_st:string25 
                                         VAR out_len : w_integer;
                                         VAR x : integer) : integer; EXTERNAL;

    begin (* moo *)

      prompt:= 'prompt here              ';
      status := lib$get_foreign (command_Line,prompt,out_len,x);
 
            ...

   end (* moo *).

 
 After calling lib$get_foreign, the command line will be in command_Line.
 Note that you have to parse this string in order to extract each parameter.
 (Its not like an argv array in C, its whatever was typed after the command
 name). You don't have to specify a prompt.  We don't use promping here, and 
 we never tried it.  You can find more specific information about this
 routine, as well as the status codes that the function returns,  in the 
 VAX Run-time library manual.  (they may also be on line.  Run help and
 look under topic RTL-Routines.).

 Once you compile and link the program, you must assign the executable name
 to a symbol and then to run the program, type in the symbol then the
 rest of the command line.  For example, if my executable is 
 disk01:[jmg]moo.exe, then at the VAX prompt, one would type:

    $ gorf:==$disk01:[jmg]moo

 to run moo (with a command line), one types:

    $ gorf commandline


 Hopes this helps.  good luck.


                                                -- jogle