Re: ORA_FFI help please!

Mark Daynes wrote:
>
> Help,
>
> I'm using ORA_FFI to call functions in a 3rd party DLL. Everything is
> fine until I call a function that requires a parameter to be of type
> LPSTR (Long Pointer to a string). I keep getting an error returned from
> the function indicating that the item I passed in was not recognised, so
> I rang Oracle support who told me that I can pass in char pointer and
> long integers, but not LPSTR.
>
> Oh help. Has anyone managed to achieve *ANYTHING* like this? My
> function declaration declares that parameter as C_CHAR_PTR but nothing
> seems to work. Is this just one of those unsupported things or is there
> a workaround?
>
> Thanks in anticipation.
>
> Regards
> Mark Daynes
> Plural Heaven Ltd
> www.pheaven.demon.co.uk

Hi.

Of course it will work. LPSTR is just a plain char pointer. Be aware that you need to declare the varchar2 parameter as "in out" or else you can run into trouble. Also note that a null varchar2 string is treated different from a varchar2 with contents. Use the foreign call assistant to generate the code if in doubt and remember to check "pre-allocated" and give a size in bytes for the char pointer parameter.

Hope this helps.

Ciao,

Finn

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