Specifications

SERIES 3/3A PROGRAMMING GUIDE
2-10
The
<29>
immediately following the zero at the end of the first zero terminated string indicates that the
remainder of the command line is
0x29
bytes long - as is indeed the case.
The next byte after this is the so-called
command byte
:
•
a command byte of
'O'
means, for a file-based application, that a named file is to be opened
•
a command byte of
'C'
means, for a file-based application, that a named file is to be created
•
a command byte of
'D'
means the application is to connect to the Window Server in background.
A command byte of
'D'
arises only for the built-in applications, and is not considered in the remainder of
this documentation. (When it
does
arise, it is handled automatically by code in
hwim.dyl
, which silently
translates it into one of the other two cases.)
Following the command byte, there is a zero-terminated string giving the public name of the application.
After this comes another zero-terminated string, containing both the default extension and (if present) the
alias info. The alias info, if present, is separated from the default extension by a space.
Finally, yet another zero-terminated string gives the full path name of the file to open or create.
With regard to the above example:
•
The command byte of the application is
'O'
•
The public name of the application is
"Program"
•
The default extension is
".OPL"
•
The alias info is
"OROPO"
•
The name of the file to open is
"LOC::M:\DAT\DATA.DBF"
.
Summary of command line format
In summary, the format of the command line of a Series 3 application is as follows:
<command byte><public name><0>[<default extension>[<space><alias info>]<0><full
pathname><0>]
Supplying a command line from the SIBO Debugger
Ordinarily, applications are executed from the System Screen, which automatically constructs a suitable
command line.
When executing an application from the Debugger (or from an alternative "Shell" program), the
command line has to be supplied explicitly. Some examples follow:
•
SDBG TELE "CTELE",0,"LOC::M:\TEL\TELE.TEL"
- debug the application
tele
giving it the public
name
Tele
, and have it Create the file
LOC::M:\TEL\TELE.TEL
on start up
•
SDBG DA2 "ODAYS",0,"LOC::A:\ANN\DAYS.ANN"
- debug the application
da2
giving it the public
name
Days
, and have it Open the file
LOC::A:\ANN\DAYS.ANN
on start up
•
SDBG JO1 "CJOKER",0,0
- debug the application
jo1
(which is not file-based), giving it the public
name
Joker
.
These examples take advantage of the following processing of the command line by the Sibo Debugger:
•
parameters entered as a string (
"..."
) are passed on to the program with a zero terminating the
string
•
parameters given in numeric form (eg
0
) are passed on to the program as single bytes
•
adjacent parameters separated by commas are concatenated.
One drawback of the command line processing of the Sibo Debugger should be pointed out: everything is
automatically upper-cased. This means that if an application button has, for example, been assigned to
the public name
Days
, no application run in this way from the Sibo Debugger will ever be tasked to as a
result of the user pressing the corresponding application button (for public names are in general
case-
sensitive
).