[fpc-devel] out parameters in RTL/FCL

[Vincent Snijders]

Peter J. Haas wrote:
> I write in German language because I'm not able to translate my
> statement comprehensibly. Maybe anybody can translate it for people,
> which don't can read German.
> 
> 
> Ich habe diese Mail hier geschrieben, weil im Vergleich mit diesem
> Thread deutlich zu sehen ist, das die zum Abblocken benutzen Argumente
> gänzlich falsch waren. Ich habe diese Mail geschrieben, weil ich ein
> solches Verhalten absolut unverschämt finde.

Maybe something was lost in my translation of the German, but you may be 
right that offers for patches from somebody who is known to deliver, are 
treated differently than people just pointing out things that can be 
improved.

Peter wrote in that thread:
> When we don't like something or find it low priority like this don't
> expect anything from us. Sending a patch to implement the missing feature
> that you want will increase the chance that it'll be added to FPC.

So when Mattias wrote:
> At the moment there are a lot of warnigns for uninitialised var parameters.
> 
> Is it possible to replace the 'var' with 'out' specifiers?
> Can I send patches for that?

it was looked upon more favorable then before.

Since that previous thread fpc 2.0.0 is released, so that changes in the 
RTL can be made more cleanly (remember the 1.9.9 had be compatible with 
fpc 1.0.10 too).

procedure int_str(l: longint; {$ifdef ver1_0}var{$else}out{$endif} s: 
string);
doesn't look too good, and knowing you would want to remove the ifdef a 
couple of months later, doesn't help either.

I hope I have made things a bit clearer.

Regards,
Vincent.