[fpc-devel] cdecl and constant parameters

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Wed, 31 Mar 2010, Jonas Maebe wrote:

>
> On 31 Mar 2010, at 20:01, Seth Grover wrote:
>
>> The documentation
>> (http://www.freepascal.org/docs-html/ref/refsu56.html) says "A
>> constant argument is passed by reference if its size is larger than a
>> pointer. It is passed by value if the size is equal or is less then
>> the size of a native pointer."
>>
>> I have a packed record type defined which contains two 64-bit integers
>> (so it's obviously bigger than a pointer). I wrote a routine that
>> takes one of these records as a constant argument (eg., "procedure
>> Doit(const rec : TMyRecord);")
>>
>> I compiled it and looked at the assembly being generated, and sure
>> enough it was being passed by reference, just as the documentation
>> says. However, if the procedure is declared as "cdecl" the record
>> itself (its contents) are copied onto the stack.
>>
>> Should the documentation be updated? Or is this incorrect behavior?
>
> I personally think that the documentation should not say anything at all about how "const" parameters are passed, as this should be an implementation detail that nobody should care about.

While I principally agree with you:

It must, for Delphi compatibility. In Delphi the same is true, and
is (unfortunately) documented.

We had this discussion already a couple of times.

Michael.

>
> That said, with "cdecl", "const" has the same meaning as it has in C, which is "pass the argument exactly the same way as when there is no const modifier".
>
>
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