Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Andrew Johnson via Core-talk <core-talk at aps.anl.gov> · Mon, 08 Jun 2020 21:11:50 -0000

tux% cat bad.db
record(ai, "") {
  field(DESC, "Test")
}
tux% softIoc -d bad.db                                                          dbLoadDatabase("/home/phoebus4/ANJ/epics/base/7.0/bin/linux-x86_64/../../dbd/softIoc.dbd")
softIoc_registerRecordDeviceDriver(pdbbase)
Error: dbRecordHead: Record name can't be empty
 at or before ")" in path "."  file "bad.db" line 1
Error: syntax error
dbLoadRecords: failed to load 'bad.db'
Error: Failed to load: bad.db

tux% cat bad.db
record(ai, "a b") {
  field(DESC, "Test")
}
record(ai, "a.b") {
  field(DESC, "Test")
}
record(ai, "a$b") {
  field(DESC, "Test")
}
record(ai, "a\"b") {
  field(DESC, "Test")
}
tux% softIoc -d bad.db
dbLoadDatabase("/home/phoebus4/ANJ/epics/base/7.0/bin/linux-x86_64/../../dbd/softIoc.dbd")
softIoc_registerRecordDeviceDriver(pdbbase)
Bad character ' ' in record name "a b"
Bad character '.' in record name "a.b"
Bad character '$' in record name "a$b"
Bad character '"' in record name "a\"b"
dbLoadRecords("bad.db")
iocInit()
Starting iocInit
############################################################################
## EPICS R7.0.3.2-DEV
## Rev. R7.0.3.1-294-g75a3442669af831d8a6b
############################################################################
iocRun: All initialization complete
epics> dbl
a b
a.b
a$b
a\"b

The fact that the messages are printed before the command that caused
them is a feature of the new version of softIoc, but all those record
names do actually generate an error message when you load them. I did
that instead of erroring out because we didn't used to reject such
names, and as you have noticed some of those characters do work in some
situations.

Note that if I had been strict about checking names the BNL naming
convention that includes {} characters inside record names would have
been prohibited. As it is since we added JSON link types records cannot
be named "{something}", and the brace characters have not been added to
the documented list of legal record name characters.

I'm not in favor of our getting too strict about record names too
quickly.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1882520

Title:
  Constant arrary input links of size 1 don't work

Status in EPICS Base:
  In Progress

Bug description:
  Constant input links in array form with 1 element don't work and
  return an empty array.

  Example:
  field (INP, [42])

  As soon as a comma is present, it works:
  field (INP, [42,])

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Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System