Checking the Actions Database

Your application accesses the database if it needs to display the icon or label for an action. Also before invoking an action, your application can check that it exists. An action is identified in the database by the action name:

ACTION action_name
{
  ... 
}

For example, the action definition for the Calculator looks like this:

ACTION Dtcalc
{
      LABEL        Calculator
      ICON          Dtcalc
      ARG_COUNT          0 
      TYPE                 COMMAND
      WINDOW_TYPE           NO_STDIO
      EXEC_STRING           /usr/dt/bin/dtcalc
      DESCRIPTION           The Calculator (Dtcalc) action runs the \
                              desktop Calculator application. 
}

The action name for the Calculator action is Dtcalc.

When an executable file has a file name that matches an action name in the existing database, that file is an action file--a representation for the underlying action. The information about the icon and label for that file are stored in the database.