[fpc-devel] Porting FPC to IBM zArch

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Sven Barth wrote:

We're heading off topic, no disrespect to Bernd intended.

>> With the compiler as it stands, I've been able to define e.g. 
>> <variant> + <dynamic array>, define a variant constant "reduce", and 
>> then do e.g.  a := reduce + b  where b is an array. Which was all fine 
>> except that (at least when I last looked) there wasn't a compact 
>> notation for initialising a dynamic array, i.e. no  b := (1, 2, 3, 4).
>>
> Interesting idea to "misuse" a Variant for that :)

It was the only numeric type I could get to work that way, but I didn't 
try e.g. a type defined as an empty record which might be more appropriate.

> If you have a named dynamic array type then you can use 
> "TMyArrayType.Create(1, 2, 3, 4)", though this only exists in Trunk 
> (reason: Delphi compatibility). My idea was to implement a Pascal like 
> way for this somewhen which would use "b := [1, 2, 3, 4]" (because in 
> code sections arrays are normally done using "[...]" instead of "(...)" 
> (which is used in constant sections)).

[Nod] Yes, the hack I described above was done at about the time we were 
discussing that sort of thing which was also when I came across Vector 
Pascal... which actually has some nice ideas.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

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