[ale] OT: c++ datatypes question

[J.M. Taylor]

Greetings ale

Got a c++ question that I hope somebody out there in ale-land can help 
with.  It's from my ongoing and getting-very-close-to-finished Palm 
Conduit project, but I don't think any palm knowledge is required for this 
one.

Palm has a datatype WORD which is an unsigned, 16-bit int.  I am trying to
read in a delimited record from a text file into a buffer and assign
what's in the buffer as the value of the variable in question (let's call
it wVar). I cannot change the datatype of wVar. So, ignoring the mechanics
of reading in the value, which works just fine, let's say the buffer I
read into is called tmp.

  wVar = (unsigned short) atoi(tmp);  (or, (unsigned __int16) atoi(tmp))
compiles just fine but dies at runtime.  


  sprintf((char*)wVar,"%u",tmp);
Compiles and doesn't crash at runtime, but I'm getting a zero value which 
isn't right.  Setting the value staticly, like sprintf((char*)wVar,"2")  
gives me a zero value too.

For Palm's DWORD datatype, which is unsigned 32-bit int, all I have to do 
is dwVar = atoi(tmp);  after verifying that tmp isn't null.  So, logic 
dictates that if I cast the incoming buffer to an unsigned 16-bit int, all 
should work as planned.  

Because I am using VisualStudio .NET on W2k, palm's debugger doesn't work
nor does palm's published workaround for the specific debugger problem on
this platform.  Which means at runtime I am completely, totally blind and
just have to flail about hoping that it doesn't crash.  Because I don't
know jack about c, this is causing me great pain.

Thanks as always
jenn

-- 
Jenn Taylor
jtaylor at onlinea.com

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