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Anonymous
Simulating unsigned integer arith in LS (for buffer length arguments etc) (by Geoff Moore, 05/12/2013 08:33:53 AM) |  |
This is a subject that has come up several times over the years...
In the past I'd used various ugly schemes of hex manipulation, for example simple stuff like 'Clng(Val("&H" & srcdoc.NoteID & "&"))' in order to prevent trouble from "negative" numbers.
Just recently, I wanted to use 'NSFItemGetText' to retrieve LARGE (ie > 32k bytes) text items. The buffer size argument on the API call is unsigned 16-bit as is the returned length.
Rather than mess around with hex, I wrote a couple of wrapper functions:
Function signed(u16 As Long) As Integer
If u16 > 32767 Then signed = -(65535 - u16 + 1) Else signed = u16
End Function
Function unsigned(s15 As Integer) As Long
If s15 < 0 Then unsigned = 65535 + s15 + 1 Else unsigned = s15
End Function
Example usage:
Dim s_retlen as integer, retlen as long
s_retlen = NSFItemGetText(nh, "text", Buff50k, signed(BUFF50K_LEN))
retlen = unsigned(s_retlen)
These functions provide a handy way of flipping between longs and "unsigned integers".
Such arithmetic is also useful for sanely handling BLOCKIDs in LS.
Geoff.