[fpc-devel] Bug in PWidechar and refcounting

[Alexey Barkovoy]

> Normally I would aggree with you, but as far as I can see, PWideChar is
> also an automated type. (If not then large parts of the variant-code in
> the RTL has to be rewritten, and probably alsoe the wstrings.inc file)
>
>>From wstrings.inc:
>
>  WideString is defined as a 'silent' pwidechar :
>  a pwidechar that points to :
>
>  @-8  : SizeInt for reference count;
>  @-4  : SizeInt for size;
>  @    : String + Terminating #0;
>  Pwidechar(Widestring) is a valid typecast.
>  So WS[i] is converted to the address @WS+i-1.
>
> So there is a bug somewhere. But if they should not be refcounted, that's
> ok. But then I have some fixs for the variant-code

Above is just an internal description of WideString layout in memory, so this 
layout allows easy type conversion of WideString to PWideChar. Note: PWideChar, 
PAnsiChar, PChar are just pointers and not garbage collected by compiler. But 
AnsiString and WideString are compiler managed types. So, as Peter mentioned, 
behaviour you are seeing is by design.