Language Guide

CHAPTER 4

Commands

Command Deﬁnitions 97

Data Size application command4

A Data Size command is a request for the size, in bytes, of the data of one or

more objects. The value returned is the size of the data (a value) that would

result from a Get command on the same object or objects.

SYNTAX

data size of referenceToObject [ as className ]

PARAMETERS

referenceToObject

A reference to the object or objects whose data size is to be

returned.

Class: Reference

className The class of data for which to determine the size (see “Notes”).

Class: Class identiﬁer

Default value: The default value class for the object

RESULT

The size, in bytes, of the object or objects.

If the referenceToObject parameter speciﬁes a single object only (such as word 1

or the last word), the result is a single integer that speciﬁes the size of the

object in bytes. If the speciﬁed object doesn’t exist, for example, if the reference

is word 12 and there are fewer than 12 words in the speciﬁed container, the

application returns an error.

If the referenceToObject parameter refers to more than one object (such as the

words whose first letter is "B"), the result is a list of integers. The

ﬁrst item in the list is the size of the ﬁrst object speciﬁed, the second item is the

size of the second object speciﬁed, and so on. If the speciﬁed objects don’t exist,

for example, if the reference is the words whose first letter is "B"

and there are no words that begin with “B”, the result is an empty list.

Class: Integer or list of integers