HELP OBJECTFILE                                 David Young
                                                February 1992
                                                revised July 1994


        objectfile(<name>) -> <objectfilename>

Objectfile attempts to return a path for an object file, given a basic
name.  It is intended to be called from top level during compilation of
a library.  The convention adopted is that the file is assumed to be in
the file

    <lib_dir>/bin/<MACHINE_TYPE>/<name><SUFFIX>

where <lib_dir> is the directory containing the library being compiled,
<MACHINE_TYPE> is normally got from -sys_machine_type- (see
*SYSTEM/sys_machine_type), and <SUFFIX> is .o or .so depending on
whether static or dynamic linking is expected.

If a library filed as /usr/local/poplocal/local/vision/lib/abcd.p makes
this call:

    objectfile('xxyy') -> STRING

when running on a Sun 4, then STRING will contain

    /usr/local/poplocal/local/vision/lib/bin/sun4/xxyy.o

if this .o file exists, and <false> if it does not.

Under Solaris on a Sun 4, the directory used is sun4r5, and the suffix
is .so.

Objectfile returns false if the file it is looking for does not exist.

The advantages of using objectfile are that all libraries that get their
object files via this procedure can be kept consistent, and a new
convention can be implemented simply by changing this procedure.

--- $popvision/help/objectfile
--- Copyright University of Sussex 1992. All rights reserved. ----------
