'\"macro stdmacro
.\"
.\" Copyright (c) 2000 Silicon Graphics, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.
.\"
.\" This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
.\" under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
.\" Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your
.\" option) any later version.
.\"
.\" This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
.\" WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY
.\" or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License
.\" for more details.
.\"
.\"
.TH PMATOMSTR 3 "PCP" "Performance Co-Pilot"
.SH NAME
\f3pmAtomStr\f1,
\f3pmAtomStr_r\f1 \- convert a performance metric value into a string
.SH "C SYNOPSIS"
.ft 3
#include <pcp/pmapi.h>
.sp
const char *pmAtomStr(const pmAtomValue *\fIavp\fP, int \fItype\fP);
.br
char *pmAtomStr_r(const pmAtomValue *\fIavp\fP, int \fItype\fP, char *\fIbuf\fP, int \fIbuflen\fP);
.sp
cc ... \-lpcp
.ft 1
.SH DESCRIPTION
.de CR
.ie t \f(CR\\$1\f1\\$2
.el \fI\\$1\f1\\$2
..
All performance metric values may be encoded in a
.CR pmAtomValue
union, defined as follows;
.PP
.ft CR
.nf
.in +0.5i
typedef union {
    __int32_t    l;     /* 32-bit signed */
    __uint32_t   ul;    /* 32-bit unsigned */
    __int64_t    ll;    /* 64-bit signed */
    __uint64_t   ull;   /* 64-bit unsigned */
    float        f;     /* 32-bit floating point */
    double       d;     /* 64-bit floating point */
    char         *cp;   /* char ptr */
    pmValueBlock *vbp;  /* pmValueBlock ptr */
} pmAtomValue;
.in
.fi
.ft 1
.PP
Given the performance metric value pointed to by
.IR avp ,
and a performance metric type defined by
.IR type ,
.B pmAtomStr
will generate the corresponding metric value as a string,
suitable for diagnostic or report output.
The
.B pmAtomStr_r
function does the same, but stores the result in a user-supplied buffer
.I buf
of length
.IR buflen ,
which should have room for at least 80 bytes.
.PP
The value for
.I type
is typically extracted from a
.CR pmDesc
structure, following a call to
.BR pmLookupDesc (3)
for a particular performance metric.
.PP
If the
.I type
is
.B PM_TYPE_STRING
values longer than 38 characters will be truncated after 34 characters,
and truncation shown with ellipsis ``...'' at the end of the value.
.PP
If the
.I type
is
.B PM_TYPE_AGGREGATE
then up to the first three 32-bit words are displayed as hexadecimal values.
.PP
If the
.I type
is
.B PM_TYPE_EVENT
then a summary of the number of event records found in the value
is generated.
.PP
The return value from
.B pmAtomStr
is held in a single static buffer, so
the returned value is only valid until the next call
to
.BR pmAtomStr .
.SH NOTES
.B pmAtomStr
returns a pointer to a static buffer and hence is not thread-safe.
Multi-threaded applications should use
.B pmAtomStr_r
instead.
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR PMAPI (3),
.BR pmConvScale (3),
.BR pmExtractValue (3),
.BR pmLookupDesc (3),
.BR pmPrintValue (3),
.BR pmTypeStr (3)
and
.BR pmUnitsStr (3).