From: Alan T. DeKok <aland@freeradius.org>
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2022 17:52:52 +0000 (-0400)
Subject: more casting comments
X-Git-Url: http://git.ipfire.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?a=commitdiff_plain;h=08e3f6a829d97ff879b41f070715f462bca3203f;p=thirdparty%2Ffreeradius-server.git

more casting comments
---

diff --git a/doc/antora/modules/reference/pages/type/cast.adoc b/doc/antora/modules/reference/pages/type/cast.adoc
index 96c77b4e12a..3c7da26690d 100644
--- a/doc/antora/modules/reference/pages/type/cast.adoc
+++ b/doc/antora/modules/reference/pages/type/cast.adoc
@@ -39,6 +39,7 @@ prefixing a value with the type name, surrounded by brackets;
 
 We can add a cast to the above example, as follows:
 
+.Example
 [source,unlang]
 ----
 if ("%{sql:SELECT ipaddress FROM table WHERE user=%{User-Name}}" == (ipaddr)192.0.2.1) }
@@ -52,7 +53,7 @@ interpreted as the data type `ipaddr`, and not as the literal string
 `"192.0.2."`.
 
 For a full list of data types which can be used in a cast, please see
-the xref:unlang/type/all_types.adoc[list of data types] page, and the
+the xref:type/all_types.adoc[list of data types] page, and the
 "Basic Type Types" section.
 
 In most cases, the server can automatically determine what data type
@@ -60,6 +61,41 @@ to use.  The cast syntax is used when either the data type is
 ambiguous, or when data should be normalized prior to comparison, or
 when a specific data type is required.
 
+=== Expressions
+
+Unlang xref:unlang/expression.adoc[expressions] can use casts, too, as
+in the following example:
+
+.Example Casting numbers to a 'string'
+[source,unlang]
+----
+(string)(5 + 6)
+----
+
+The output of this cast will be the string value `"11"`.
+
+Casting expressions can also be used to "force" specific data types.
+For example, if we want to get the network byte-order value of a
+16-bit integer, we can do the following:
+
+.Example Casting numbers to a fixed-size network byte order
+[source,unlang]
+----
+(octets)((uint16) 258)
+----
+
+The output of this cast will be an `octet` string having value
+`0x0103`.  This kind of casting can be used to create and pack "ad
+hoc" data structures for sending in a packet:
+
+.Example Ad-hoc network structures
+[source,unlang]
+----
+(octets)((uint16) 258) + (octets)((uint16) 4) + (octets)((ipv4addr) 127.0.0.1)
+----
+
+will result in the `octet` string value `0x010300047f000001`.
+
 === Compatibility
 
 For compatibility with version 3, the `<cast>` syntax is also