[fpc-devel] dominant short strings in compiler source

[L505]

> > On 17 mei 2006, at 19:59, L505 wrote:
> >
> >> What do you guys thing about the idea to implement what DEC Pascal
> >> and Extended Pascal
> >> have - a 2 byte length ShortString (MediumString?), uprdade *some*  of
> >> the path related
> >> ShortStrings to be MediumString[1000] instead of ShortString[255].
> >> For some situations
> >> it would probably fix some problems immediately just by upgrading  to
> >> string[1000] or
> >> even string[500].
> >
> >
> > There is the basis of a "longstring" type in the compiler which does
> > that more or less, but it was never fully implemented, because nobody
> > cares/cared about it. And you'd still have to convert these  longstrings
> > to ansistrings and back every time you interface with  sysutils, which
> > would introduce extra overhead.
>
> IMHO, longstring are wasteful for memory, having a fixed length string
> of 1000 for paths, which on my computer paths are less 100 chars.
>

My paths are less than 100 chars. That is not the problem. Otherwise I wouldn't be
noticing the bugs I've noticed for the last few years. I've never had a path beyond about
50 characters. The problem seems to be that several OPTIONS and PATHS at some point get
combined into one short string at the end of the "funnel".