Hi Stefan,

I agree with your explanation about the size of BOOL and bool. 

I checked the program also on my Raspberry and there the old code works like on your mac. I don't really understand 
why the behavior is different for my system. The initializing of the union should also work for my system. 

At the moment I am using:

Arch Linux
Linux office 5.4.42-1-lts #1 SMP Wed, 20 May 2020 20:42:53 +0000 x86_64 GNU/Linux
gcc version 10.1.0 (GCC)

One thing which makes me a bit suspicious is that if I do:

u_odb u = m_data[index];
char dest[rpc_tid_size(m_tid)];
memcpy(dest, &u, rpc_tid_size(m_tid));

Clion tells me "Clang-Tidy: Undefined behavior, source object type 'midas::u_odb' is not TriviallyCopyable". 

I am not sure if this is the problem since I am not so familiar with this TriviallyCopyable. I need to further investigate here.

So fare the update from my side.

Cheers,
Marius

> Hi Marius,
> 
> your fix is good. Thanks for digging out this deep-lying issue, which would have haunted us if we would not fix it. 
> The problem is that in midas, the "BOOL" type is 4 Bytes long, actually modelled after MS Windows. Now I realized
> that in c++, the "bool" type is only 1 Byte wide. So if we do the memcopy from a "c++ bool" to a "MIDAS BOOL", we
> always copy four bytes, meaning that we copy three Bytes beyond the one-byte value of the c++ bool. So your fix
> is absolutely correct, and I added it in one more space where we deal with bool arrays, where we need the same.
> 
> What I don't understand however is the fact why this fails for you. The ODB values are stored in the C union under
> 
> union {
>   ...
>   bool m_bool;
>   double m_double;
>   std::string *m_string;
>   ...
> }
> 
> Now the C compiler puts all values at the lowest address, so m_bool is at offset zero, and the string pointer reaches
> over all eight bytes (we are on 64-bit OS).
> 
> Now when I initialize this union in odbxx.h:66, I zero the string pointer which is the widest object:
> 
>   u_odb() : m_string{} {};
> 
> which (at least on my Mac) sets all eight bytes to zero. If I then use the wrong code to set the bool value to the ODB 
> in odbxx.cxx:756, I do 
> 
>   db_set_data_index(... &u, rpc_tid_size(m_tid), ...);
> 
> so it copies four bytes (=rpc_tid_size(TID_BOOL)) to the ODB. The first byte should be the c++ bool value (0 or 1),
> and the other three bytes should be zero from the initialization above. Apparently on your system, this is not
> the case, and I would like you to double check it. Maybe there is another underlying problem which I don't understand
> at the moment but which we better fix.
> 
> Otherwise the change is committed and your code should work. But we should not stop here! I really want to understand
> why this is not working for you, maybe I miss something.
> 
> Best,
> Stefan
> 
> > Hi Stefan,
> > 
> > your test program was only working for me after I changed the following lines inside the odbxx.cpp
> > 
> > diff --git a/src/odbxx.cxx b/src/odbxx.cxx
> > index 24b5a135..48edfd15 100644
> > --- a/src/odbxx.cxx
> > +++ b/src/odbxx.cxx
> > @@ -753,7 +753,12 @@ namespace midas {
> >           }
> >        } else {
> >           u_odb u = m_data[index];
> > -         status = db_set_data_index(m_hDB, m_hKey, &u, rpc_tid_size(m_tid), index, m_tid);
> > +         if (m_tid == TID_BOOL) {
> > +             BOOL ss = bool(u);
> > +             status = db_set_data_index(m_hDB, m_hKey, &ss, rpc_tid_size(m_tid), index, m_tid);
> > +         } else {
> > +             status = db_set_data_index(m_hDB, m_hKey, &u, rpc_tid_size(m_tid), index, m_tid);
> > +         }
> >           if (m_debug) {
> >              std::string s;
> >              u.get(s);
> > 
> > Likely not the best fix but otherwise I was always getting after running the test program:
> > 
> > [ODBEdit,INFO] Program ODBEdit on host localhost started
> > [local:Default:S]/>cd Equipment/Test/Settings/Test_odb_api/
> > key not found
> > makoeppe@office ~/mu3e/online/online (git)-[odb++_api] % test_connect
> > Created ODB key /Equipment/Test/Settings
> > Created ODB key /Equipment/Test/Settings/Test_odb_api
> > Created ODB key /Equipment/Test/Settings/Test_odb_api/Divider
> > Set ODB key "/Equipment/Test/Settings/Test_odb_api/Divider" = 1000
> > Created ODB key /Equipment/Test/Settings/Test_odb_api/Enable
> > Set ODB key "/Equipment/Test/Settings/Test_odb_api/Enable" = false
> > Get definition for ODB key "/Equipment/Test/Settings/Test_odb_api"
> > Get definition for ODB key "/Equipment/Test/Settings/Test_odb_api/Divider"
> > Get ODB key "/Equipment/Test/Settings/Test_odb_api/Divider": 1000
> > Get definition for ODB key "/Equipment/Test/Settings/Test_odb_api/Enable"
> > Get ODB key "/Equipment/Test/Settings/Test_odb_api/Enable": false
> > Get definition for ODB key "/Equipment/Test/Settings/Test_odb_api/Divider"
> > Get ODB key "/Equipment/Test/Settings/Test_odb_api/Divider": 1000
> > Get definition for ODB key "/Equipment/Test/Settings/Test_odb_api/Enable"
> > Get ODB key "/Equipment/Test/Settings/Test_odb_api/Enable": false
> > Datagenerator Enable is Get ODB key "/Equipment/Test/Settings/Test_odb_api/Enable": false
> > false
> > makoeppe@office ~/mu3e/online/online (git)-[odb++_api] % odbedit
> > [ODBEdit,INFO] Program ODBEdit on host localhost started
> > [local:Default:S]/>cd Equipment/Test/Settings/Test_odb_api/
> > [local:Default:S]Test_odb_api>ls
> > Divider                         1000
> > Enable                          y 
> > 
> > > > I am getting back false. Which looks nice but when I look into the odb via the browser the value is actually "y" meaning true which is stange. 
> > > > I added my frontend where I cleaned all function leaving only the frontend_init() one where I create this key. Its a cuda program but since 
> > > > I clean everything no cuda function is called anymore.