Re: Ascii databases

[mrk@aps.anl.gov (Marty Kraimer)]

Nick Rees suggested that the path for the ascii database files should
be just like the UNIX path, i.e. a list of colon separated directories.
After thinking about it, I agree completely. I dont know what I was
thinking. Here is the way path will be handled:

NEW METHOD FOR PATH

The path will follow the normal Unix conventions, i.e. it will be of
the form:

directory:directory: ... :directory


The static database access library will provide the following
routines

dbPath(pdbbase,"<path")
dbAddPath(pdbbase,"<path>")

The following commands can be given in definition files

path "path"
addpath "path"

dbExpandInclude will have the format

dbExpandInclude -I "path" file1 ...

The ioc routine dbLoadDatabase will have the format:

dbLoadDatabase("file.db","path")


dbExpandInclude and dbLoadDatabase determine the default path as follows:

  If the path argument is not NULL it is the default
  else if the env variable EPICS_DB_INCLUDE_PATH is defined it is used 
  else the default path is ".", i.e. the current directory.

END MESSAGE FOR PATH

Note also that, per Jeff Hills suggestion, all references to ascii are being
removed. I hope to have a new beta release and greatly revised Application
Developer's Guide ready in about 2 weeks.


Marty Kraimer