So I am giving a good effort into writing a CL/CMD pair to start one of our programs from the command line, but I've hit a snag.  Here is my CMD source:

CMD PROMPT('Start Engine')

PARM KWD(PGM)      TYPE(*NAME)  LEN(10) DFT('TRAN_ENGV2') PROMPT('Engine Program Name')
PARM KWD(PATH)     TYPE(*PNAME) MIN(1) PROMPT('IFS Directory')
PARM KWD(PORT)     TYPE(*INT2)  MIN(1) PROMPT('Listening Port')
PARM KWD(NUMCHLD)  TYPE(*INT2)  MIN(1) PROMPT('Number Of Children To Start')
PARM KWD(JOBNAME)  TYPE(*NAME)  LEN(10) DFT('DFCENG') PROMPT('Name of this job')

and the first few lines of my CL:

PGM PARM(&ENG_PROG &PATH &PORT &NUMCHLD &JOBNAME)
                                                 
    DCL VAR(&ENG_PROG) TYPE(*CHAR) LEN(10)      
    DCL VAR(&PATH) TYPE(*CHAR) LEN(1000)        
    DCL VAR(&PORT) TYPE(*UINT)                  
    DCL VAR(&NUMCHLD) TYPE(*UINT)                
    DCL VAR(&JOBNAME) TYPE(*CHAR) LEN(10)        

The &PATH parameter, as it comes into the CL, has garbage in it, hence the "Path name contains embedded nulls." problem.

Questions:
1.  Can anyone help me with this?  Seems like the problem is in the CMD source.
2.  What is the real value of using *PNAME?  Can't I just use *CHAR here?

Software/Hardware used:
i7 V7R1 CL CMD