Problem passing Arexx parameters

[Honitos]

Hi guys,


I am struggeling with passing parameters to my program.


I want to send a filename with full path to my program this way:


rx MYPROGRAM OPEN "Ram Disk:file"


where MYPROGRAM is the Arexx-Port of my listening program, OPEN is a command and "Ram Disk:file" is the filename my program should process.


I am checking the incoming Arexx-Message and parse rm_Args[0].


My problem is, the parameter seems to be parsed by the RexxHost or so as I always get this arexxstring:


OPEN Ram Disk:file


without the quotes.



How can I get the parameter string unchanged so that I can parse the parameters correctly?

[daxb]

I think you cannot use MYPROGRAM as an Arexx-Port.

What about "PARSE ARG cmd filename ." in your script to parse arguments?

[Honitos]

Sorry that was an unclear explanation:

MYPROGRAM is just a placeholder, not the real portname, the real portname is "PED.1".
And my program itself is not arexx, but AmiBlitz.

To be concrete, I want to implement an arexxcommand "OPEN" that lead my program to open the file passed to it with the command.
That works well until a path or filename has a space in its name.

And as I want to add additional parameters, I can not concatenate the parameter strings in my program.

[thomas]

Originally Posted by daxb

I think you cannot use MYPROGRAM as an Arexx-Port.

You can use any name as an ARexx port, why should "MYPROGRAM" be different?

Originally Posted by Honitos

My problem is, the parameter seems to be parsed by the RexxHost or so

That's what ARexx does, always and everywhere. If you write ARexx scripts you should be used to it. It resolves variables, changes unknown variables to upper case, executes arithmetic operations and removes quotes.

If you want to keep quotes in strings you have to surround them by quotes, too.

The only difference to a command in a script is that rx does not accept single quotes for the outer surrounding. This makes the command line a bit ugly because to keep double quotes in a string surrounded by double quotes you have to double them...

This one should work:

rx MYPROGRAM OPEN """Ram Disk:file"""

this one looks a bit more readable (well, it would if there was another argument behind the file name):

rx MYPROGRAM "OPEN ""Ram Disk:file"""


In a script you would use single quotes:

/* rexx */
address MYPROGRAM
'OPEN "Ram Disk:file"'

[daxb]

Sorry, I thought already that I don't have understood the question/problem.

That MYPROGRAM is a placeholder is clear but I didn't knew that you can use "rx <portname> [<arguments>]".

[thomas]

Originally Posted by daxb

I didn't knew that you can use "rx <portname> [<arguments>]".

You are certainly right, this is not possible.

Rx either calls a script or executes a command if it begins with a quote.

If you enter

rx myprogram open "Ram Disk:file"

in a shell, then myprogram.rexx would be called and if myprogram.rexx looks like this:

/* rexx */
say arg(1)

the output is

open "Ram Disk:file"

rx does not consume quotes and does not change case.

But the question was about an ARexx port. If you send data to an ARexx port from an ARexx script, then ARexx first processes the command line before it sends it to the port

To do this from rx, you would have to enter

rx "address myprogram open """"""Ram Disk:file"""""""

or

rx "address myprogram open '""Ram Disk:file""'"

to keep one set of quotation marks.

[Honitos]

Thanks for clarification!