iable) act as a continuation
              marker:  the marker indicates that the string associated
              with the component containing it is continued into the
              next literal component of the kernel pool variable.
 
              If contin is blank, all of the components of `item'
              will be retrieved as a single string. 
 
   lenout     is the available space in the output string, counting
              room for the terminating null.  Up to lenout-1 &quot;data&quot; 
       