7.1 General Remarks

Before we go into more detail we start with some general remarks.

Several functions of the interface rely on the fact that their arguments are of a certain type. For example

char *OZ_atomToC(OZ_Term t)

expects t to be an Oz atom and returns a string representing the print name of t. In case t is not an atom, the behaviour of OZ_atomToC is undefined and it will typically crash the whole system.

If not stated otherwise all functions that return pointers into memory, return a pointer to a memory area that is allocated statically. This provides highest flexibility and efficiency. For example the string returned by OZ_atomToC must not be overwritten by the user and the next call to any of the interface functions may modify it. So the user should take care to make a copy of these memory blocks if necessary and free it again himself.