Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Michael Davidsaver via Tech-talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov> · Wed, 8 Nov 2023 10:13:05 -0800

On 11/8/23 05:45, Érico Nogueira Rolim via Tech-talk wrote:

Hi there!

This was an inconsistency I noticed in caget. The help output lists
multiple DBR_...INT types as options for caget's -d option, but none of
them work, because the dbr_text array from
modules/ca/src/client/access.cpp includes only DBR_...SHORT strings.
Would it be okay to simply remove the INT options from the help output
entirely? Or should the tool try and replace "INT" for "SHORT", similar
to how it adds "DBR_" when it doesn't find a match at first?

I had not noticed this before.  I guess because DOUBLE and LONG are much more common.

$ caget -d INT some:name
Requested dbr type out of range or invalid - ignored. ('caget -h' for help.)

...

Correcting the help message would be a good first step.

Somewhat related to that, it seems a bit confusing that some pieces of
code use DBR_INT instead of standardizing on DBR_SHORT.

DBR_INT == DBR_SHORT

https://github.com/epics-base/epics-base/blob/0bc6ff3d4c0c309cd76e91c6bacad33c7ec59e28/modules/ca/src/client/db_access.h#L57-L58

They are identical, and at this point serve as a confusing reminder that
epics-base originated in the era of 16-bit CPUs.

Would a patch moving everything to DBR_SHORT be of interest?

I think so.  Changing the usage anyway.  The definitions of DBF_INT and DBR_INT
need to remain.

Cheers,

Érico

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Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System