Pattern Argument Attributes

ToolTalk pattern arguments may be strings, binary data, or integer values which Tooltalk service uses to match against incoming messages.

Arguments differ from contexts in that arguments are positional paramaters while contexts are named paramaters. The order of arguments, set in a message, determines the order in which they are present in the sent and received message. That is, they must agree with the order and types of arguments set in a pattern. Since arguments are positional, you must add a “wildcard” argument for intermidiate arguments in a pattern if you wish to match an argument that is not the first argument in the incoming message. Wildcard arguments should have the vtype of “ALL” and the value of NULL.

You must use the pattern argument adding API call that matches the type of your argument (integer, binary data, or ASCII string). In particular, you should note that it is not possible to add a pattern argument with a wildcard value of NULL with tt_pattern_iarg_add(), since NULL, or 0 is a valid integer argument value. To add wildcard arguments, use tt_pattern_arg_add().