Re: Renaming copy member data structure fields

[Scott Klement <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Yikes!  You mean there's no such thing as a segfault in i5/OS?!

There are errors that are similar to a segfault, yes.  But the way i5/OS 
deals with memory is very different than just about any other operating 
system because of the single-level store paradigm.

In Windows and Unix systems, for example, a pointer is just a number. In 
OS/400, there are different types of pointers for pointing to different 
types of things, and they're not just numbers -- they're more like data 
structures, in fact. They contain security information and other things in 
addition to the actual numeric offset.

The idea behind a single-level store is that all memory and disk on the 
whole system can be addressed with a pointer. It's all one big address 
space.  Within each object you point to, there's an offset. If you try to 
refer to an offset that's past the end of the object, you'd get an error. 
(Just by setting the pointer to it! You don't even have to try to use the 
pointer...)  Likewise, there's authority considerations, if you try to set 
the pointer to something you don't have permissions to, you'll get an 
error.  There are protected spots in memory that if you try to set a 
pointer to them, you'll get an error.  So there are lots of things that 
are like a segfault, but nothing exactly the same.

One of the biggest differences between i5/OS and Unix is that in Unix each 
program typically runs in a different process.  On the other hand, in 
i5/OS, the same "job" is reused over and over again for the next prgoram 
that's run.  Since there's no process boundary, you can potentially 
resolve a pointer to the data of another program and corrupt it.  On the 
other hand, you can't muck with the actual code of the other program, 
since that requires a completely different type of pointer! :)

Anyway, an e-mail message isn't a good place to explain the whole inner 
workings of OS/400 :)  If you're really interested in that, I suggest 
going to http://iSeries400.org and buying the eBook that Leif is/was 
writing.  You'll learn a lot about how i5/OS works.

For the sake of this discussion, the important bit is that you pass the 
same size variable as the API requires.  Do it right, and your programs 
will be forward-compatible.