Hey George,

    The untested code does work, but could be a bit tricky to use because of
the Pascal type strings. The compiler started flapping about basic types,
but that boiled down to the type of ret_str as unsigned char, as opposed to
char. Hence the finicky, fardelling casts. Huh!

------------------------------------------------------------
/* LEFT$[] code */
/* string str, first char being the string length (unsigned) */
/* length len, unsigned char (max 255 char string) */
#include 
#include 
#include 

char * left_func (unsigned char * str,unsigned char len)
{
unsigned char * ret_str;

if (str[0] <= len)
    {
    if ((ret_str = (unsigned char *) malloc((size_t)str[0] + 1)) == NULL)
        return (char *) ret_str;  /* ERROR TEST, change to suit */
    memcpy (ret_str,str,(size_t)str[0] + 1);
    }
else
    {
    if ((ret_str = (unsigned char *) malloc((size_t)len + 1)) == NULL)
        return (char *) ret_str;  /* ERROR TEST, change to suit */
    ret_str[0] = len;
    memcpy (&ret_str[1],&str[1],(size_t)len);
    }
return (char *) ret_str;
}
#ifdef DEBUG

int main(void)
{
    char miggy[] = {0,'A','m','i','g','a','B','a','s','i','c'};
    char result[6], *tmp;
    int len;

    len = sizeof(miggy)-1;
    miggy[0] = (unsigned char)len;
    tmp = left_func((unsigned char *)miggy,5);
    strncpy(result,tmp+1,(size_t)tmp[0]);
    result[tmp[0]]='\0';
    free(tmp);
    tmp = malloc(len+1);
    strncpy(tmp,&miggy[1],miggy[0]);
    tmp[len]='\0';
    printf("%s\n",result);
    printf("LEFT$(\"%s\", 5) returns the leftmost %d
characters of \"%s\".\n",
        tmp, 5, tmp);
    free(tmp);
    return 0;
}
#endif


------------------------------------------------------------

Best wishes,
Bill.

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