🚀 go-pugleaf

In article q70@ugle.unit.no, chris@mtdhp1.marintek.sintef.no (Christian Steinebach) writes:
> 
> Is there a way to convince a Simula compiler that an integer
> is actually a pointer to character string or array of character
> strings? The Lund compiler contains some library functions
> (argv and envp) which return pointers to the commandline
> arguments and the environment, respectively. But HOW do I 
> access the character strings when Simula insists in telling
> me that my pointer is an integer?
> 
> 	Christian 
> 


The external library routines argv and envp you are referring to are
part of the Simula compiler and runtime system, and I don't think they
were intended to be called directly by a normal user program. Because
to use them you really need to know what is going on in the runtime
system.

Instead, if you want to access the command line given to a program, you
can use the Simula class "CmdLineClass" which is available in the
"simlib" library supplied with the Lund compiler. This class embeds the
calls to argv and envp and supplies a Simula interface on a higher
level.

As a more concrete answer to your question, the results of argv and
envp need to be converted to Simula objects by other library routines
in the system, and this is done inside the CmdLineClass. The C-strings
cannot be used directly as Simula texts because Simula texts have
another layout than C-strings, and they are moved around by the garbage
collector.

If the CmdLineClass does not fit your needs, you can probably get help
from Lund Software.

----
Gorel Hedin
Dept of Computer Science
Lund University