Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

I finally found some time to come back to the 'dbll' code. You described the new link methods, but I still have a question.

1. You wrote:

The following new routines in dbLink.h allow you to examine the link
support that is attached to a particular link field:

int dbLinkIsDefined(const struct link *plink);  /* 0 or 1 */
int dbLinkIsConstant(const struct link *plink); /* 0 or 1 */
int dbLinkIsVolatile(const struct link *plink); /* 0 or 1 */
int dbIsLinkConnected(const struct link *plink); /* 0 or 1 */

The first one dbLinkIsDefined() tells you whether the field is attached
to a link support at all.

But to use them, I have to cast the field like ((DBLINK *)dbEntry.pfield) before I even know if it is a link at all, because the functions work on links, not on generic db fields. Can that be safe?

2. Also you mentioned the new "faster" way to get the links:

There is now a faster way to find all the DB links that point to a
particular record though, the dbDbLink.c code now keeps an ELList of
those links for the new lock-set code in dbLock.c to use.

This is true if I already have the record. But does it make a difference if I only have the record name (or a name pattern)? In that case I need iterate all records anyway. Only that this time I do it to find the target record(s) instead of the records with links. So with n records it is O(n) in both cases.

Or is it so that 2 is actually the solution to 1?

-- 
Complexity comes for free, Simplicity you have to work for.