ECPG: Automatic Storage allocation for NULL-pointing output variables

Hi there,

I'm looking for an alternative to statically sized character arrays
within ECPG.

E.g. exec sql select relname into :VAR from pg_classes;

It should (!) be possible to obtain this by using pointers which are
initialized to NULL.

It is possible for
integer *var=0;
reading an arbitrary number of integers into a malloced array
and
char *var=0;
reading one arbitrary length string into a malloced character
array

Works perfectly.

But ecpg does not accept
char **var=0;

Is there any way to specify arbitrary strings of any length ?

The code (execute.c:435) has also support for varchar - but how to
declare such a variable length varchar?

And the code (execute.c:432) multiplies the number of tuples with the
longest string. But how to use this code in real life?

Looks like dead code to me (hopefully I'm wrong)

Yours
Christof

PS: I'm willing to implement char**
(allocate tuples*sizeof(char*) + sum(length(tuple[n])+1) bytes,
fill the array with pointers,
fill the space behind the array with the actual data.
This means just one free get's it all.
But this code cannot be portable!)