[fpc-devel] Manual memory management with ansistrings and dynamic arrays

[Jonas Maebe]

On 12 Dec 2013, at 16:39, Adriaan van Os wrote:

> Jonas Maebe wrote:
>
>>> In theory, you should call "initialize" for every record/array  
>>> containing management types in your allocated block to be safe.
>> And in practice, you also have to call "finalize" again for every  
>> record/array containing managed types (and for every separate  
>> managed type too, I forgot to mention this earlier although I hope  
>> that was implicitly clear) in that allocated block before freeing  
>> it again (to prevent memory leaks).
>
> Thanks for your reply. I feel comfortable calling "initialize" and  
> "finalize" for every managed type in the memory block that I  
> allocate/deallocate manually. However, can you elaborate why  
> "initialize" and "finalize" must be called for the containing record/ 
> array too ? If my understanding of your reply is correct ?

If you call it for an array/record containing managed types, then then  
compiler/rtl will  initialise all managed fields/elements within that  
array/record. Calling it for individual elements is only required if  
they're not contained in a record/array.


Jonas