A deeper discussion about USER

[Tom Pancero]

I wish to confirm that the conclusions about the USER command
are correct.  This deals with the mechansim used to exchange data
between the Filepro processing table and the outside world a.k.a.
the shell.

For the sake of this discussion lets say the utility being called,
by the USER command, is an executable binary that interfaces
some other software product to our Filepro processing.  Our
processing table will send a string to the utility and will expect
1, or more, lines of 'returns' from the utility.  We can not
anticipate how many lines of data it will return.

We know that USER uses the Standard Input, and Standard Output,
as the channel for the data to flow through.  We can also agree
that the utility will return string after string of data through
the STDOUT with the final string having a NULL character
(0x00) as its final character.

It has been my experience that the NULL character will NEVER
make it through the USER command as it will be stripped off
either by the shell, or by the USER command. (I am not sure
which).  Is this correct?

There is a 'work around' where you have the Utility_Interface
program send a special string when IT detects the NULL, and
then you test for the "DONE flag" in your processing table.

Is there a better way to accomplish this?

Thanks