VMS Help TCPIP Services, Programming Interfaces, RPC XDR Routines, xdr_string  *Conan The Librarian (sorry for the slow response - running on an old VAX)

    Serializes and deserializes strings (arrays of bytes terminated
    by a NULL character).
    Format
      #include  <tcpip$rpcxdr.h>
      bool_t  xdr_string(XDR *xdrs, char **spp, u_int maxsize);

1 - Arguments

 xdrs
    A pointer to an XDR stream handle created by one of the XDR
    stream handle creation routines.
 spp
    A pointer to a pointer to a character string.
 maxsize
    The maximum size of the string.

2 - Description

    A filter primitive that translates between strings and their
    corresponding external representations. Strings cannot be longer
    than the value specified with the maxsize parameter.

    While decoding, if *spp is NULL, this routine allocates the
    necessary storage to hold the NULL-terminated string and sets
    *spp to point to the allocated storage.

    This routine is the same as the xdr_wrapstring routine, except
    that this routine allows you to specify maxsize.

3 - Return Values

    TRUE               Indicates success.
    FALSE              Indicates failure.