[Info-vax] Any Way to Pass Arrays of Strings from C to Basic?

[Simon Clubley]

On 2019-11-08, Bob Gezelter <gezelter at rlgsc.com> wrote:
> On Friday, November 8, 2019 at 8:16:44 AM UTC-5, Simon Clubley wrote:
>> 
>> BTW, I don't know DEC Basic. Can you _directly_ call into a DEC BASIC
>> function from a C language routine and if so, are there limits on
>> what can be passed from the C routine into the DEC BASIC routine ?
>> 
>> If there are not, then I don't see why you can't just use one of
>> the various C language SAX parsers and register your BASIC function
>> as the callback handler if you didn't want to bother with one of
>> the DOM style parsers.
>> 
> Simon,
>
> Been there, done that. In a variety of language combinations, some
> involving BASIC, some not.
>

So have I in a variety of languages, but never involving DEC Basic...

The kind of thing I was thinking of was if a C routine could pass
a null terminated string _directly_ into a DEC Basic function or
if DEC Basic functions could only receive strings when passed in
by descriptor.

> There are two basic categories of issues:
>
> - language RTL initialization; and
> - headers/bindings
>
> Some language RTLs presume, throjugh one path or another, that the INIT
> routines have been called.  This is easily remedied, but may require some
> research to determine the right routines to invoke.
>

Whenever I have encountered the initialisation/setup problem, either
the main program is written in the non-C language so that's not an
issue, or there may be documentation stating which language specific
initialisation routines need to be called from your main program.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.