Re: Yet another discovery: undocumented message file oem.iem

*** Danger -- unsupported and unsupportable ideas! *** For whatever it is worth, messages in the range 30000..31999 are found in the file oem.iem at run time -- and that covers both the positive and negative numbers. As far as I can tell, it will be recognised by all current versions of products, from 4.1x I4GL forward. It is not intended for the use to which you are proposing to use it; it is not documented anywhere that I know of; there are no plans to support it that I know of; you will run into problems if you ever work with a product that has OEM-provided error messages in this range. But, that apart, it is unlikely to change much this side of the end of the millenium. Of course, that's not much of a promise any more:-) In fact, to the best of my knowledge, which files contain which error messages is not documented anywhere -- most people inside Informix would not know where to find the information. There are lots of other reserved ranges for error message files, so if you really want to go out on a limb, you can experiment to find other ranges too. Bear in mind that in versions 4.1x and 5.0x, the message numbers are constrained to 16-bit integers (ie +/- 32767), but in 6.0x and above, they are 32-bit numbers. To reiterate -- none of this is supported! I said nothing. Yours, Jonathan Leffler (johnl@informix.com) #include <disclaimer.h> PS: Of course, this could all be changed at any time. Error message file handling is an area long overdue for a complete overhaul, so don't rely on what I say continuing to apply for ever. But don't under-estimate the forces of inertia either. Also, the location of the files is very different under 7.20 from all prior versions. And you can run into interesting scenarios when you aren't using English language message files. And ... }Date: Mon, 15 Jul 96 18:51:50 PDT }From: marco greco <marcog@ctonline.it> }X-Informix-List-Id: <list.10691> } }[Oh No! Here he goes again!] }Last friday, right before leaving for a nice weekend at Isola delle }Correnti (the south most edge of Sicily, southern than Tunis), I did }another of my strange experiments: added to 4glusr.msg a custom error }message and wrote a little 4gl program calling err_get to see if 4gl was }able to access the newly added message. } }Why would anybody in is right mind do something like that? Off the top of }my head, two good reasons - multilinguistic support (even though my CASE }has this built in) and hardwiring to 4gl messages common to all }applications used in one site. } }It was sheer luck that the message number chosen was 30000 and not (say) }-997, because, rather than getting the expected "Marco's silly message" or }"Unknown error message: 30000" the program joyfully replied "Cannot access }message file oem.iem". }Oh, well, if Informix, unsolicited, decided to provide an oem message }file, then the idea must have looked good even to them! } }Quickly wrote and compiled the requested message file, and pronto, I was }able to access my custom message. } }Needless to say, I could find no reference whatsoever to this hidden }message file in the manuals or release notes. } }Admittedly, we're not oem's. Nonetheless, we would like to use this }feature, so, is there anybody out there that knows: } }1) If this feature will be supported in the future }2) what is the useful range of messages that can be safely used } }(I bet that Informix employees among us are able to answer my questions)