OSF DCE Application Development Guide--Core Components

Interface Definition Language
The idl_ macros are defined in dce/idlbase.h, which is included by header files that the
IDL compiler generates.
17.10.3 Constructed Type Specifiers
IDL constructed types include structures, unions, enumerations, pipes, arrays, and
pointers. (In IDL, as in C, arrays and pointers are specified via declarator constructs
rather than type specifiers.) Following are the keywords used to declare constructed type
specifiers:
struct
union
enum
pipe
Constructed types are described in detail later in this chapter.
17.10.4 Predefined Type Specifiers
While IDL per se does not have any predefined types, DCE RPC IDL implicitly imports
nbase.idl, which does predefine some types. Specifically, nbase.idl predefines an error
status type, several international character data types, and many other types. Following
are the keywords used to declare these predefined type specifiers:
error_status_t
ISO_LATIN_1
ISO_MULTI_LINGUAL
ISO_UCS
The error status type and international characters are described in detail later in this
chapter.
17.10.5 Type Declarator
An IDL type_declarator can be either a simple declarator or a complex declarator.
A simple declarator is just an identifier.
A complex declarator is an identifier that specifies an array, a function pointer, or a
pointer.
124245 Tandem Computers Incorporated 17− 17