The user-written initialization callback routine is passed to TPU$INITIALIZE as a bound procedure value and called to supply information needed to initialize DECTPU. If the user_arg parameter was specified in the call to TPU$INITIALIZE, the initialization callback routine is called with only that parameter. If user_arg was not specified in the call to TPU$INITIALIZE, the initialization callback routine is called with no parameters. The user_arg parameter is provided to allow an application to pass information through TPU$INITIALIZE to the user-written initialization routine. DECTPU does not interpret this data in any way. The user-written callback routine is expected to return the address of an item list containing initialization parameters. Because the item list is used outside the scope of the initialization callback routine, it should be allocated in static memory. The item list entries are discussed in the TPU$INITIALIZE help topic. Most of the initialization parameters have a default value; strings default to the null string, and flags default to false. The only required initialization parameter is the address of a routine for file I/O. If an entry for the file I/O routine address is not present in the item list, TPU$INITIALIZE returns with a failure status.