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

    The Put String to Common routine copies the contents of a string
    into the common area. The common area is an area of storage
    that remains defined across multiple image activations in a
    process. Optionally, LIB$PUT_COMMON returns the actual number
    of characters copied. The maximum number of characters that can
    be copied is 252.

    Format

      LIB$PUT_COMMON  source-string [,resultant-length]

1 - Returns

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

2 - Arguments

 source-string

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

    Source string to be copied to the common area by LIB$PUT_COMMON.
    The source-string argument is the address of a descriptor
    pointing to this source string.

 resultant-length

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

    Number of characters copied by LIB$PUT_COMMON to the common area.
    The resultant-length argument is the address of an unsigned word
    integer that contains this number of characters. LIB$PUT_COMMON
    writes this number into the resultant-length argument.