C/C++ Programmer's Guide (G06.27+, H06.08+, J06.03+)
Running Programs in the OSS Environment
To run a C or C++ program from the OSS environment, enter the program file name at the OSS
shell prompt. You can also use the run command to run a process with HP specific attributes. For
more details, see the run(1) reference page, available either online or in the Open System
Services Shell and Utilities Reference Manual.
Program Initialization
Your program begins execution when the operating system transfers control to your program’s
object code. Before executing the code, however, the C run-time library initializes its run-time
environment. The C run-time library also calls a CRE initialization function.
The CRE initialization function establishes the CRE’s internal data structures, I/O model, and so
forth, in addition to shared facilities such as the user data heap. After the CRE has established its
environment and set up shared facilities, it calls a language-specific initialization function for each
language that is represented by a routine in your program, except TAL and pTAL. Each
language-specific initialization function sets up its data structures and file I/O model for the language
that it supports.
When the CRE completes initialization, it returns control to the C run-time library. The run-time
library completes its own initialization and returns control to your main function, which begins
executing the instructions in the program’s object code.
For Guardian processes, the C run-time library performs several additional initialization tasks
during the process startup phase, including:
• Processing the startup message sent by the command interpreter
• Processing any command interpreter PARAM or ASSIGN messages
• Opening the standard input, output, and error files: stdin, stdout, and stderr
• Invocation of the constructors for global and static variables in C++
As it performs these tasks, the C run-time library acquires detailed information regarding the
environment in which the process is executing. The library saves this information in the argument
array. The argument array contains program and argument information extracted from the RUN
command—namely, program-file and each of the arguments in args-list.
For Guardian processes, the library also saves information in the environment array. The environment
array contains environment parameters from PARAM messages.
The Guardian C run-time library includes six functions that allow the retrieval of the process startup
message, the PARAM message, and the ASSIGN messages. For more details, see Retrieving Startup
Information (page 322).
The Standard Input, Output, and Error Files
In the Guardian environment, the CRE automatically opens three standard files: stdin, stdout, and
stderr. You can suppress the automatic opening of these files with the NOSTDFILES pragma.
In the OSS environment, the standard files are controlled by the OSS file system, not the CRE. For
information on using the standard files in the OSS environment, see the Open System Services
Programmer’s Guide.
320 Running and Debugging C and C++ Programs