Re: write API for COBOL - end of record?

[Simon Coulter <shc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 17/05/2006, at 12:55 AM, Adrienne McConnon wrote:

> I have a question regarding the 'write' API.  Is there an end of 
> record marker that needs to be set when writing to an existing stream 
> file?

No. You specify the length of the data to write. This should be the 
exact length of the data rather than the length of the variable 
containing the data.

>   I have tried                             CALL PROCEDURE 
> '_C_IFS_fwrite'  and CALL PROCEDURE 'WRITE'  with no good results
>
> The 1st 2 lines below represent the last 2 lines in an existing stream 
> file.  The next line contains some display data and mostly garbage.  
> but it should have written a 200 byte record.

The data you show indicates that you wrote whatever junk just happened 
to be in storage. How are you invoking 'write' and what do you pass to 
it?

write (in all its forms) expects the address of the data and the length 
of the data plus a file descriptor all of which should be passed by 
VALUE. For example:

CALL PROCEDURE "write" USING BY VALUE FD
                                                         BY VALUE ADDRESS OF 
DATA
                                                         BY VALUE DATA-LEN
                                           RETURNING RC

Note that passing a pointer by VALUE is exactly the same as passing a 
variable by REFERENCE so if your data fits within the limits of a COBOL 
variable you can also do:

CALL PROCEDURE "write" USING BY VALUE FD
                                                         BY REFERENCE DATA
                                                         BY VALUE DATA-LEN
                                           RETURNING RC

Regards,
Simon Coulter.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
   FlyByNight Software         AS/400 Technical Specialists

   http://www.flybynight.com.au/
   Phone: +61 3 9419 0175   Mobile: +61 0411 091 400        /"\
   Fax:   +61 3 9419 0175                                   \ /
                                                             X
                 ASCII Ribbon campaign against HTML E-Mail  / \
--------------------------------------------------------------------