Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Dear EPICS users,

I've encountered a situation with CA Gateway where a `caput` to PV through
Gateway behaves differently compared to a `caput` directly to IOC, bypassing the
gateway.

If I caput to an IOC (no Gateway involved):
$ EPICS_CA_ADDR_LIST=ioc_address caput x:ai 10w
The record will store the value 10. The excess 'w' character at the end is
ignored, which is OK.

However when doing the same through CA Gateway:
$ EPICS_CA_ADDR_LIST=gateway_address caput x:ai 10w
The 'w' character at the end will cause the record to store value 16 (10 hex),
which I don't expect. The 'w' is just an example and can be replaced by a
string.

Is this implicit conversion to hex known behavior when using CA Gateway? Can it
be changed to behave the same way as a caput directly to IOC behaves?

The use case is strange and I know better than to put random characters after
the value I want to set, but we have a situation where an operator might
habitually put the 'w' because the PV is a setpoint that controls power supply
output. In that case a 'caput PS-Power 100w' would result in PS-Power being set
to 256 instead of the expected 100 (Watts).

Versions used:
OS: RHEL8
base-7.0.6
ca-gateway-2.1.2
pcas-4.13.2

CA Gateway startup parameters:
./gateway \
  -sip 192.168.56.102 \
  -cip "127.0.0.1:7001" \
  -access /path/to/access.acf \
  -no_cache

Regards,
Andrej