Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

On Monday 01 May 2006 15:14, Liyu, Andrei wrote:
> 	It's fine but I have another question :) Both functions read
> file. I wouldn't catch your attention why I need something because it
> is another area of distributed control system. Let say - I need
> function dbLoadRecordsNew( char * records, char * substitutions),
> where records is usual db file.

What is the difference between your dbLoadRecordsNew and dbLoadRecords?

Giving a name for a routine does not necessarily specify its semantics 
completely ;-)

> 	I looked into code and was very unhappy. dbLoadRecords comes to
> dbReadDatabase( ... char * filename ...). That was written so far ...
> on yacc (???). 

Yes. (Bison, to be accurate, which is the gnu version of yacc).

> Basically, code hasn't comments and isn't 
> self-documented. 

I never had any difficulties understanding the code. I always found it 
exceptionally clear and well-written.

> Application Development doesn't give information 
> too. I couldn't find function like dbLoadRecordsNew. Is it correct?

Again, that depends on what you expect it should do.

> 	I thought a little and decided that way to write simple
> dbLoadSingleRecord( char * record) function can be easier (then
> understand dbReadDatabase() )
>
> 	I suppose that should be like
> 1. There is global variable DBBASE *pdbase that is root Epics DB.
> (Manual writes that IOC can have some DBs ... = some pdbase. Is it
> correct?)

Yes.

> So first is allocation DB root dbAllocBase()

If you want to create a completely new database, yes. If you want to add 
stuff to an existing database, just use existing pdbbase. Note that 
dbAllocBase is currently called by dbLoadDatabase only.

> 2. Each record has entry in pdbase.
> Call DBENTRY * dbAllocEntry(DBBASE *pdbase). That allocates memory
> for entry (!= for record) (?) and link into root.
> 3. Allocate memory for record. Call malloc with according record?

Despite its name, DBENTRY is /not/ an entry in the database. Rather it 
is a cursor with which to access a database.

If you look at base/src/dbStatic, there is a routine dbAllocRecord (in 
dbStaticRun.c) that you can use to allocate a new record instance.

> 4. Fill record structure

You can use dbPutString for this. Generally, I recommend to look at the 
code in base/src/dbStatic. For instance, the code that creates a record 
instance is at the end of dbLexRoutines.c 
(dbRecordHead,dbRecordField,dbRecordInfo,dbRecordBody). These get 
called by the (yacc generated) parser. (You can find which routine gets 
called for which syntactical construct by looking at the corresponding 
rule in dbYacc.y; a $n argument is the nth token (as a string) 
recognized by the rule.) dbRecordField in turn calls dbPutString, 
etc...

HTH,
Ben

References:

Who can help with dbLoadRecords()? Liyu, Andrei

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