Procedure

   void dasac_c ( SpiceInt       handle,
                  SpiceInt       n,
                  SpiceInt       buflen,
                  const void   * buffer  ) 

Abstract

 
   Add comments from a buffer of character strings to the comment 
   area of a binary DAS file, appending them to any comments which 
   are already present in the file's comment area. 
 

Required_Reading

 
   DAS 
 

Keywords

 
   FILES 
   UTILITY 
 

Brief_I/O

 
   Variable  I/O  Description 
   --------  ---  -------------------------------------------------- 
   handle     I   DAS handle of a file opened with write access. 
   n          I   Number of comments to put into the comment area. 
   buflen     I   Line length associated with buffer.
   buffer     I   Buffer of lines to be put into the comment area. 
 

Detailed_Input

 
   handle   The file handle of a binary DAS file which has been 
            opened with write access. 
 
   n        The number of strings in buffer that are to be 
            appended to the comment area of the binary DAS file 
            attached to handle. 

   buflen   is the common length of the strings in buffer, including the 
            terminating nulls.
 
   buffer   A buffer containing comments which are to be added 
            to the comment area of the binary DAS file attached 
            to handle.  buffer should be declared as follows:
              
               ConstSpiceChar   buffer [n][buflen]
              
            Each string in buffer is null-terminated.
 

Detailed_Output

 
   None. 
 

Parameters

 
   None. 
 

Exceptions

 
   1) If the number of comments to be added is not positive, the 
      error SPICE(INVALIDARGUMENT) will be signaled. 
 
   2) If a non-null, non printing ASCII character is encountered in the 
      comments, the error SPICE(ILLEGALCHARACTER) will be 
      signaled. 
 
   3) If the binary DAS file attached to handle is not open for 
      write access, an error will be signaled by a routine called 
      by this routine. 
 
   4) If the input buffer pointer is null, the error SPICE(NULLPOINTER) 
      will be signaled.

   5) If the input buffer string length buflen is not at least 2, 
      the error SPICE(STRINGTOOSHORT) will be signaled.

Files

 
   See argument handle in Detailed_Input. 
 

Particulars

 
   Binary DAS files contain a data area which is reserved for storing 
   annotations or descriptive textual information about the data 
   contained in a file. This area is referred to as the "comment 
   area" of the file. The comment area of a DAS file is a line 
   oriented medium for storing textual information. The comment 
   area preserves any leading or embedded white space in the line(s) 
   of text which are stored so that the appearance of the 
   information will be unchanged when it is retrieved (extracted) at 
   some other time. Trailing blanks, however, are NOT preserved, 
   due to the way that character strings are represented in 
   standard Fortran 77. 
 
   This routine will take a buffer of text lines and add (append) 
   them to the comment area of a binary DAS file. If there are no 
   comments in the comment area of the file, then space will be 
   allocated and the text lines in buffer will then placed into the 
   comment area. The text lines may contain only printable ASCII 
   characters (decimal values 32 - 126). 
 
   There is no maximum length imposed on the significant portion 
   of a text line that may be placed into the comment area of a 
   DAS file. The maximum length of a line stored in the comment 
   area should be reasonable, however, so that they may be easily 
   extracted. A good value for this would be 255 characters, as 
   this can easily accommodate "screen width" lines as well as 
   long lines which may contain some other form of information. 
 

Examples

 
   Let 
 
      handle   be the handle for a DAS file which has been opened 
               with write access. 

      n        be the number of lines of text to be added to the 
               comment area of the binary DAS file attached to 
               handle. 

      BUFLEN   be the declared line length of the buffer.

      buffer   is a list of text lines to be added to the comment 
               area of the binary DAS file attached to handle. 
 
   The call 
 
      dasac_c ( handle, n, BUFLEN, buffer );
 
   will append the first n line(s) in buffer to the comment area 
   of the binary DAS file attached to handle. 
 

Restrictions

 
   1) This routine uses constants that are specific to the ASCII 
      character sequence. The results of using this routine with 
      a different character sequence are unpredictable. 
 

Literature_References

 
   None. 
 

Author_and_Institution

 
   N.J. Bachman   (JPL) 
   K.R. Gehringer (JPL) 
 

Version

 
   -CSPICE Version 1.1.0, 02-MAR-2003 (NJB) 

       Added error check in wrapper for non-positive
       buffer line count.

   -CSPICE Version 1.0.0, 25-FEB-2003 (NJB) (KRG)

Index_Entries

 
    add comments to a binary das file 
    append comments to a das file comment area 
 

Link to routine dasac_c source file dasac_c.c