Why?

[Frank D. Engel, Jr.]

Okay, so I got tired of waiting for RevDB to be fixed for PostgreSQL 
(or for some explanation of how to set it up, in case my drivers are 
not correctly positioned), so I am trying to write my own, 
Transcript-native PostgreSQL driver for Rev (with its own API, by means 
of a 'start using' command...)  Never tried this before, but I did get 
the 'start using' to work.

I *think* I was able to get sockets working, too, but for some reason, 
at least under OS X, I cannot seem to read from a socket.  What am I 
doing wrong here?  I have the following handler in my code:

function pgFetchMessage
   read from socket pg_sock for 5
   put it into x
   put (charToNum(char 2 of x) * 16777216) + (charToNum(char 3 of x) * 
65536) + (charToNum(char 4 of x) * 256) + charToNum(char 5 of x) \
       into l
   read from socket pg_sock for l
   put it into z
   answer charToNum(the first char of x) titled (pg_sock) && (the length 
of x)
   return (x & z)
end pgFetchMessage


The "answer" line results in the following title bar (empty message):

localhost:5432 0

Why would this happen?  That "0" means that the length of string "x" 
(which should contain exactly five characters, right?) is zero.  In 
other words, that string is empty -- but it shouldn't be!

Somehow I was able to get it to register a message with the letter "O" 
out in front, when I was expecting to get an "R" from the server.  I 
went over the protocol docs to figure out what would cause a message 
starting with "O", and there was no message starting with "O" in the 
docs.  Strange...

I am reasonably convinced (given the handler below) that I am not 
getting a socketError (the "err!" box never shows up; pg_wantsock 
contains the same text as pg_sock by now):

on socketError sock, errmsg
   if sock is pg_wantsock then
     put empty into pg_sock
     put errmsg into pg_err
   end if
   answer "err!" & errmsg
end socketError


So what could be happening?


-----------------------------------------------------------
Frank D. Engel, Jr.  <fde101 at fjrhome.net>

$ ln -s /usr/share/kjvbible /usr/manual
$ true | cat /usr/manual | grep "John 3:16"
John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten 
Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have 
everlasting life.
$