[fpc-devel] Re: dominant short strings in compiler source

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Sat, 20 May 2006, Tomas Hajny wrote:

> > > Regarding unit Dos - providing PChar versions of
> > > some routines might be of general use, probably
> > > more useful than longstrings.
> > 
> > Admitting that C-language style programming (*char) is more practical and real world than
> > Pascal programming?
> 
> ;-) Well, that depends. I certainly don't think 
> that *char is more practical for string 
> manipulation in general. However, when talking 
> about unit DOS, the underlying OS API calls 
> usually expect null terminated strings anyway. 
> Anybody could then decide whether he prefers the 
> easy to use Pascal string, because he only starts 
> executables with few parameters which could never 
> cross the limit, or whether he needs PChar for 
> whatever reason.

The DOS unit is a legacy compatibility unit; It's interface is fixed.
It should not be tampered with, also not something as seemingly innocent
as adding pchar overloaded calls.

Michael.