RE: Initializing a record VAL field with a constant

["J. Frederick Bartlett" <bartlett@fnal.gov>]

Marty,

  Your suggestion has the expected behavior. Given that setting the VAL and
PINI fields correctly initializes the record, why should setting the INP
field to a constant value ever be needed? If it is not needed, why does the
"Record Reference Manual" discuss the INP method rather than the more
intuitive PINI method?

								Fritz

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Marty Kraimer [mailto:mrk@aps.anl.gov]
> Sent: Friday, June 11, 2004 1:27 PM
> To: bartlett@fnal.gov
> Cc: tech-talk
> Subject: Re: Initializing a record VAL field with a constant
>
>
>
>
> J. Frederick Bartlett wrote:
>
> >  Recently I was adding some new records to our name/value
> server IOC and I
> >noticed an unexpected behavior. My new records, which are of
> type longin and
> >ai, are used to supply system-wide values, i.e. firmware version
> numbers for
> >comparison with hardware, computational constants, etc., for the
> rest of the
> >control system. The records are initialized by placing a
> constant value in
> >the INP field of the record definition text.
> >
> >  As one would expect, after initialization the UDF field for
> these records
> >is zero, indicating that the VAL field has had a value assigned at some
> >point in the record's existence. What I did not expect was that the SEVR
> >field is set to INVALID and the STAT field to UDF. I would have expected
> >that, if you are going to bother to set the UDF field to zero,
> consistency
> >would dictate that the SEVR and STAT fields would be given the value
> >NO_ALARM, just as it would be when the VAL field is set by a CA put
> >operation. Is this behavior intentional and, if so, why?
> >
> >  I also discovered that, for the stringin record, this
> technique of setting
> >an initial value by placing a constant -- in this case a string
> constant --
> >in the INP field does not work at all. Is there a corresponding
> method for
> >initializing the VAL field of a stringin record?
> >
>
> Just initialize the VAL field directly. Also specify PINI.
>
>
> record(stringin,"mrkstring") {
>          field(VAL,"test string")
>          field(PINI,"YES")
> }
>
> This works with current releases. I am not sure about 3.14.4
>
> Marty
>
>