Home

 

NameValueString (MQCHARn)

This is a variable-length character string containing name/value pairs in the form:

name1 value1 name2 value2 name3 value3 ...

Each name or value must be separated from the adjacent name or value by one or more blank characters; these blanks are not significant. A name or value can contain significant blanks by prefixing and suffixing the name or value with the double-quote character; all characters between the open double-quote and the matching close double-quote are treated as significant. In the following example, the name is

FAMOUS_WORDS, and the value is

Hello World:

FAMOUS_WORDS "Hello World"

A name or value can contain any characters other than the null character (which acts as a delimiter for NameValueString; see below). However, to assist interoperability an application can restrict names to the following characters:

• First character: upper or lowercase alphabetic (A through Z, or a through z), or underscore.

• Subsequent characters: upper or lowercase alphabetic, decimal digit (0 through 9), underscore, hyphen, or dot.

If a name or value contains one or more double-quote characters, the name or value must be enclosed in double quotes, and each double quote within the string must be doubled:

Famous_Words "The program displayed ""Hello World"""

Names and values are case sensitive, that is, lowercase letters are not considered to be the same as uppercase letters. For example,

FAMOUS_WORDS and Famous_Words are two different names.

The length in bytes of NameValueString is equal to StrucLength minus MQRFH_STRUC_LENGTH_FIXED. To avoid problems converting the user data in some environments, make this length a multiple of four. Pad NameValueString with blanks to this length, or terminate it earlier by placing a null character following the last significant character in the string. The null character and the bytes following it, up to the specified length of NameValueString, are ignored.

Note:

Because the length of this field is not fixed, the field is omitted from the declarations of the structure that are provided for the supported programming languages.

 

Home