Pseudo string types and zero

[mback2k]

It would be cool if .p-ascii, .p-utf8 and .p-unicode could also accept zero as argument. This would help a lot with Windows API functions that either accept a string or zero.

[srod]

Yes I have encountered that a couple of times now; there are indeed occasions when I would like to pass a null string and not an empty one. Unfortunately, it would appear that #Null$ equates to an empty string and not a null one.

+1.

[Trond]

Maybe this helps?

Code: Select all

Procedure GetRawString(N.i)
  If N = 0
    Debug "Null string"
  Else
    Debug PeekS(N)
  EndIf
EndProcedure

a.s
CallFunctionFast(@GetRawString(), a)

[mback2k]

Trond, I don't understand what the purpose of this code snippet is.

I don't want to use it with CallFunction or Prototypes, I am using many WinAPI libraries with Import and it's a little bit annoying to always do the ASCII->Unicode and back convertion on my own, because sometimes I need to pass a string to one function and another time I need to pass a zero as argument to the same function at the same parameter index.

Edit: Now I see what you mean, but that way I can't use benefit .p-types.

[Trond]

It shows that if you pass a non-initialized string variable, then it's like passing a null string.

[mback2k]

Yes, but always creating a dummy string variable before calling a function seems to be a little bit unconventional. IMHO.

Pseudotypes have a purpose and they work very well. They just need to be tweaked a little.

[srod]

Aye Trond has a good point there. Now why the hell did I not think of that before? Ack, must be getting old!

Still, it would be more explicit in a way if the pseudotypes could just accept an explicit zero.