Dictionary/3000 Reference Manual (32244-90001)

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6 The Dictionary DICTPDE Utility
Overview
DICTPDE, the PASCAL Definition Extract Utility, is an interactive, command-driven
utility provided by the Dictionary. This utility extracts data and file definitions from the
dictionary and generates the corresponding PASCAL declarations for the data definitions.
The generated declarations are echoed to the terminal and written to an output file which
can be used for PASCAL programs.
When a parent entity is extracted from the Dictionary, DICTPDE generates a PASCAL
record with the related child entities as the “fields” within the record. The primary name of
the parent entity is used as the record name. The aliases of the child entities are used as
the field names. (The aliases are used because they define how the child entities are known
by the parent entity.) Note that DICTPDE will not generate a data declaration for a file
which does not have any child files or any elements associated with it.
When a data declaration is generated for an entity, DICTPDE checks that the entity name,
byte position and byte offsets as defined in the Dictionary (for that entity) are compatible
with PASCAL. If the byte position and byte offsets for the entity are not PASCAL
compatible, an error message is issued and DICTPDE converts the byte position and byte
offsets to compatible PASCAL code. (Refer to PASCAL Data Type Mappings later in this
section, for more detailed information.) If the entity name defined in the Dictionary is an
illegal PASCAL name (for instance, the name contains a hyphen) or the entity name is a
PASCAL reserved word, an error message is issued and DICTPDE will convert the names
to legal PASCAL names. (Refer to DICTPDE Naming Considerations, later in this section
for more detailed information.)