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

[John Reagan]

On Friday, November 8, 2019 at 2:10:56 PM UTC-5, Dave Froble wrote:

> 
> Now, most of the VMS languages play rather well in such an environment. 
> Then there is C, which does not play well in that environment.  There is 
> the VMS calling standard, and, there is the VMS data types.  Use them, 
> and things can work well.  C is not a native VMS language, as far as I 
> know, and doesn't embrace the calling standard, nor the data types.
> 

Huh?!?!?  Of course it does.

Descriptors are a mess.  Try to handle a CLASS_VS descriptor when passed from Pascal to Fortran?  Try to handle a 64-bit descriptor in COBOL or Pascal?

We used to have a real manual that listed all the descriptor kinds that each language accepts for incoming arguments and which ones it can produce for outgoing arguments.  The caller has the responsibility to pass what the target wants (if you can figure it out).