calling managed from native

[BHunt]

I'm using a product called MPACT from ESI.  With MPACT I am able to create screens for our users to interact with.  It also allows gives me places where I can interact with the dialog.  The interaction points are written in cobol and MPACT compiles our code using the Visual Cobol compiler, but only uses the native aspect of it.  I have this MPACT program calling a Visual Cobol Winform program.  Inside of the Winform program I am doing an accept from the command line.  All of my parameters are showing up, but if I have a filler that has spaces in it then they are being truncated. 

I've attached the code that is in the MPACT program and the code that is in the winform program

We are using Visual Cobol 2.2.

[BHunt]

Forgot to mention that this was working until yesterday.  The problem started after I recompiled both the MPACT program and the winform program.

[Chris Glazier]

This appears to be a difference in the way that the command-line is returned between a native program and a managed program.

In a managed program, even a console application extra spaces are removed from the command line because it is assumed that these are individual parameters separated by a space so it reduces multiple spaces to a single space.

I tested this in 2.1 update 1 and it has the same behavior as 2.2.

You can make it return the entire command line as is by enclosing the parameters within quotes when passed in.

myprog.exe "11111      22222      333333"

when this is returned to the managed program via:

    accept my-command from command-line

my-command will contain the entire string including the enclosing quotes so those will have to be removed.

Something like:

          unstring my-command(2:) delimited by quote
             into passed-to-program

If you did not wish to change the calling program to include the quotes then you could alternatively use:

         set my-command to type Environment::CommandLine

my-command would then contain the entire command line including the program name so you would need to get rid of that.

Something like:          

         perform varying sub1 from length of my-command by -1 until sub1 = 0
             if my-command(sub1:1) = '"'
                add 2 to sub1
                exit perform
             end-if
          end-perform

          move my-command(sub1:) to passed-to-program

Thanks.

[BHunt]

Not sure what I am doing wrong.  Here is what I tried.  I have 2 scenarios.  I didn't try the quotes because if I go this route I only have to change one program.  Thanks

Scenario 1

      01  passed-to-program2 type String.

          set passed-to-program2                     to type Environment::CommandLine.

          accept passed-to-program2                  from command-line.

            if passed-to-program2 not = spaces

                           *> it is going into here and I do use a dialogresult to display to the screen and it

                               is truncating the spaces just as before?

Scenario 2

      01  passed-to-program.

          05  ptp-policy-num             pic  x(07) value spaces                 private.

          05  filler                     pic  x(01) value spaces                 private.

          05  ptp-ins-type               pic  x(01) value spaces                 private.

          05  filler                     pic  x(05) value spaces                 private.

          05  ptp-program-name           pic  x(10) value spaces                 private.

          05  filler                     pic  x(30) value spaces                 private.

          set passed-to-program                      to type Environment::CommandLine.

          move spaces                                to passed-to-program.

         accept passed-to-program                   from command-line.

          if passed-to-program not = spaces

                      *> this is also truncating the spaces

[Chris Glazier · Accepted solution]

In scenario 1 you are doing:

    set passed-to-program2                     to type Environment::CommandLine.

    accept passed-to-program2                  from command-line.

where you should only be doing

    set passed-to-program2                     to type Environment::CommandLine.

the accept statement is overriding the value that is coming in from the set statement so remove the accept any then you should see the value that is being passed.

[BHunt]

That worked.  Thank you very much.