[fpc-devel] Suggestion for change: Overly strict check

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Wed, 27 Sep 2006, Christian Iversen wrote:

> 
> Hi all.
> 
> I was hoping there could be a discussion of a certain feature in FPC, which 
> doesn't work very well for us. Ultimately, I would like to see it gone 
> completely. It's a very small extra-strong syntax check, appearantly 
> implemented to avoid bad code. However, it's not entirely obvious why this is 
> supposed to help.
> 
> Please consider this example:
> 
> type
>   tfoo = class(tbar)
>   private
>   public
>     procedure Frob();
>     procedure Wait(delay: integer);
>     procedure ReadStuff(buffer: tbuffer; wait: boolean);
>   end;
> 
> When declaring classes or interfaces, it is specifically checked that the 
> names of methods are NOT the same as _any_ variable name of _any_ other 
> method in the class. This means that the example above will NOT compile.
> 
> 
> Now, in Delphi mode this check is not performed, and so the code above will 
> compile without problems.

So, compile using Delphi mode. What's the problem ?

The check ensures that the namespace of the class is cleaner than in Delphi.
I have had several live examples where FPC has caught a bug in my Delphi code
like this.

So it stays in as far as I'm concerned, I think it is a very good check.

At the best, we could provide a command-line switch or directive to disable
or enable this check, but I would not recommend this at all.

Michael.