Finding out about Items

There is a complete set of enquiry routines that allow programs that know nothing about a noticeboard to navigate through it. NBTRACE is just such a program. A few of these routines are illustrated here.

      INCLUDE   `NBS_PAR'               ! Parameter definitions

      CHARACTER NAME*(NBS_K_MAXNAME)    ! Item name
      CHARACTER TYPE*(NBS_K_MAXTYPE)    ! Item type
      INTEGER   MAXBYTES                ! Maximum number of bytes
      INTEGER   ACTBYTES                ! Actual number of bytes
      INTEGER   MAXDIMS                 ! Maximum number of dimensions
      INTEGER   DIMS(7)                 ! Actual dimensions
      INTEGER   ACTDIMS                 ! Actual number of dimensions

      NBS_GET_NAME  (MATID,NAME,STATUS)
      NBS_GET_TYPE  (MATID,TYPE,STATUS)
      NBS_GET_SIZE  (MATID,MAXBYTES,ACTBYTES,STATUS)
      MAXDIMS = 7                       ! MAXDIMS is a MODIFIED parameter
      NBS_GET_SHAPE (MATID,MAXDIMS,DIMS,ACTDIMS,STATUS)

• Higher-level routines may wish to check consistency between shape, size and type. For example, in the above we expect ACTBYTES to be 4 (the number of bytes per pixel) times the product of the dimensions.