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Subject:
From:
Tucker Taft <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Tucker Taft <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 6 Dec 1999 10:58:31 -0500
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> ...
> One major impediment to interfacing with HTML is in the package
> Ada.Command_Line. The HTML statement,
> <FORM method="Get" action="file:///C:\Ada_Work/com_line.exe"> is a
> reasonable key to this problem. It produces a Command_Line string and does
> invoke the com_line program shown below. Unfortunately,
> Command_Line.Argument_Count does not work with the Command_Line string.
> The Get method concatenates a '?' directly after the program name.

I'm not exactly sure what is your point, but the FORM information for a GET
method is being put into the environment variables (e.g. QUERY_STRING).
There is no language-defined standard way to get the values of the environment
variables, though the Posix/Ada standard provides a way to access them
(as does Win32/Ada, presumably).  Note that by the time the Ada program
is invoked, the "?" has already been stripped out, and
the URL request information placed in the environment variables.

The only time command line arguments are used is with the "ISINDEX"
tag, and then only if there is no "=" used after the "?" of the URL.
Since the URL produced by a GET always contain an "=", the command
line arguments are never used with GET.  The "?" is used in the URL, but the
URL is broken apart by the web server (or whatever is interpreting the URL).

As suggested by others, by using the POST rather than the GET
method, the information from the FORM will be sent via
standard input, rather than via the QUERY_STRING environment variable.  I
recommend you try that approach.  (I see no reason that POST should not
work just as well as GET on a local file URL.)

> ...
> However, the program does run when actuated through the HTML form; with the
> number of arguments equal to 0.
> C:\Ada_Work\com_line.exe equals the Command_Line
> This Program is Com_Line
>
> The number of arguments =  0

Take a look at the QUERY_STRING environment variable.

> ...
> The question is which operating system, Windows or HTTP? The above problem
> is neither a bug nor a design mistake. It is correct for its intended use,
> Windows. However, it does not work with HTTP. I do believe in hindsight that
> a function that returns the entire command_line including the program name
> should be added.

That would not solve your problem.  By the time the program is invoked,
the notion of a URL string is long gone.  It has been picked apart and dumped
into the environment variables.

> ... In view of the significance of HTML-XML, I believe that it
> would be worthwhile to modify the Aonix Command_Line or any other Ada
> compiler to work with the output of HTML Get.
>
> Can any of the Ada compilers read and process a command_line that does NOT
> have a space after the name of the executable? If you wish to test this,
> please feel fee to use the Ada program and HTML page below.

This issue is a red herring.  The syntax used by the DOS shell is
different from the syntax used in a CGI URL.  By the time a program
is invoked, it does not know whether it was invoked by the DOS shell
or via CGI.  All it can look at are "argc, argv" and the
environment variables.

I suppose you could suggest that if there are no other arguments,
then the QUERY_STRING environment variable ought to be treated like
the first and only parameter.  But that definitely seems like
a kludge.  The better approach is to agree on a common interface
to environment variables.  Posix/Ada is an obvious place to
start, though we might want to define an Ada.Command_Line.Environment
child package some day.

> ----------------------------------------------------------
> --Robert C. Leif, Ph.D & Ada_Med
>
> --2 Dec. 1999
> --Last update 3 Dec. 1999

-Tuck

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