VMS Help RTL Routines, LIB$, LIB$GET_COMMON  *Conan The Librarian (sorry for the slow response - running on an old VAX)

    The Get String from Common routine copies a string in the common
    area to the destination string. (The common area is an area of
    storage that remains defined across multiple image activations in
    a process.) The string length is taken from the first longword of
    the common area.

    Format

      LIB$GET_COMMON  resultant-string [,resultant-length]

1 - Returns

    OpenVMS usage:cond_value
    type:         longword (unsigned)
    access:       write only
    mechanism:    by value

2 - Arguments

 resultant-string

    OpenVMS usage:char_string
    type:         character string
    access:       write only
    mechanism:    by descriptor

    Destination string into which LIB$GET_COMMON writes the string
    copied from the common area. The resultant-string argument is the
    address of a descriptor pointing to the destination string.

 resultant-length

    OpenVMS usage:word_unsigned
    type:         word (unsigned)
    access:       write only
    mechanism:    by reference

    Number of characters written into resultant-string by LIB$GET_
    COMMON, not counting padding in the case of a fixed-length
    string. The resultant-length argument is the address of an
    unsigned word integer containing the number of characters copied.
    If the input string is truncated to the size specified in the
    resultant-string descriptor, resultant-length is set to this
    size. Therefore, resultant-length can always be used by the
    calling program to access a valid substring of resultant-string.