🚀 go-pugleaf

	From: seismo!allegra!rayssd!rayssde!wjc@mimsy.umd.edu

	We are running 4.2BSD on a 90x and are having a problem
	getting System V Pic going. The problem seems to be in the
	program troffgen.c. Instead of passing all the troff commands
	(ie. .ps, .vs, .anything) to troff, it is printing a "ctrl A"
	instead.  Has anyone had any luck with Pic????? Any help
	would be appreciated.

					Bill Carson
					{allegra,ihnp4,linus}!rayssd!wjc

This isn't specific to ``pic'', but it sounds awful similar to a
problem I had transporting a piece of software from a VAX to the
Pyramid. It seems that on a VAX, there is always a null byte at
address 0, while on the Pyramid there's a ^A at 0, and a null byte
at address 1. This lets one get away, on the VAX, with some sloppy
programming:

	char *splat;

	splat = (char *)0;
	printf("%s", splat);

This will do ``the right thing''; that is: it will print nothing.
If this sort of thing is allowed to creep into your code and you
then transport it to a Pyramid, you start getting mysterious ^As
popping up unexpectedly.
----
					Fred Blonder (301) 454-7690
					seismo!umcp-cs!fred
					Fred@Mimsy.umd.edu

I encountered this problem last friday and found the following:

The problem is caused as follows:

troffgen is called from picy.c (generated by yacc) as:

->			yyval.o = troffgen(yypvt[-0].i);


where yypvt is declared as YYSTYPE.  The code for troffgen is:


->	obj *troffgen(s)	/* save away a string of troff commands */
->		YYSTYPE s;
->	{
->		savetext(CENTER, s.p);	/* use the existing text mechanism */


But, picy.y sends the int element of YYSTYPE --NOT the actual structure!
The simple changes below (there are 2) solve the problem...


->	obj *troffgen(s)	/* save away a string of troff commands */
*->		char *s;
->	{
*->		savetext(CENTER, s);	/* use the existing text mechanism */

------------------------
Richard Kamicar		{allegra,cmcl2,decwrl,hplabs,topaz,ut-sally}!pyramid!rk
Pyramid Technology Corp
Mountain View, CA
+1 415 965 7200