DESC field overflow

["Johnson, Andrew N. via Core-talk" <core-talk at aps.anl.gov>]

Hi Ralph,

Loading this file into the softIoc

record(ai, test) {

  field(DESC, "This is a long string that will not fit into the field")

}

fails for me on EPICS versions 7.0.9, 7.0.2, 3.15.9 and 3.14.12.8; the softIoc exits immediately with an error. On 3.14.12.5 the error was shown, but the softIoc didn’t exit so presumably following commands in an st.cmd file may have been executed.

A check for the string length in dbPutString() was moved in 106fae3b back in March 2016 (pre-3.14.12.6). Previously a truncated string was copied into the field before the length was checked and the error returned by dbPutString(). Since that commit the field value isn’t set at all, it returns the error code S_dbLib_strLen immediately.

I don’t see how any overly-long DESC field value could have been loaded from a dbLoadRecords command since 3.14.12.6. Are you sure your db-file generation code hasn’t changed and triggered this problem instead?

- Andrew

-- 

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