What Is an Intrinsic Mechanism?

The MPE/iX intrinsics mechanism provides flexible and convenient access to intrinsic routines from various languages. When an external routine is designated as an intrinsic, the compiler uses the intrinsics mechanism to determine how to invoke the routine correctly. For example, a compiler receives information about the number of parameters, the type of each parameter, and the functional return type (if applicable) and does the following:

For example, Pascal/XL requires a detailed routine header for all external routines, and all calls to a routine must adhere to strict typing constraints. However, by designating a routine as an intrinsic, the compiler uses the intrinsics mechanism to determine how to call the routine which permits removal of the detailed routine header and relaxes the strict typing constraints.

Since the type information, stored in the intrinsic mechanism, is in language-independent form, you can pass parameters of any type that conform functionally to the types expected by the intrinsic. This allows convenient and flexible access to system intrinsics through the intrinsics mechanism.

	NOTE: You can define routines for access as if they were intrinsics and place them in new or existing intrinsic files and libraries.