On 12 Oct 93  17:51:07, Steven Pasztor had this to say to Michael Baker:

 SP>> Is there any way to get C to work with Pascal style
 SP>> strings?
 MB>   Have the length byte at the start of the string and a nul byte at the
 MB>   end.
 MB>   Have conversion functions (or macros) so you can use your Pascal-C
 MB>   strings in standard library functions.

 SP> I've been thinking along those lines too... Conversion wouldn't really
 SP> be neccisary. Give C routines the string starting at the second
 SP> character, and pascal routines get the string starting from the first.
 SP> (size byte) Then all you have to do is call a routine which
 SP> recalculates the length byte, or replaces the nul depending on wether
 SP> it was altered by a C or Pascal routine. Then all you've got to do is
 SP> remember to hand C routines a string starting at the second character
 SP> instead of the first. That's where the fun starts! :-) 
What you describe here is what I had in mind when I said conversion
functions.  Something like:

#include 

char * P2Cstr(char * str)
{
    str[str[0] + 1] = '\0';
    return &str[1];
}

char * C2Pstr(char * str)
{
    /* this assumes str is a pointer to Pstr[1]
       where Pstr is an array of char */
    char * Pstr = str - 1;
    Pstr[0] = strlen(str);
    return Pstr;
}

Beware, I have not tested this.
Michael.


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