[fpc-devel] Array of char

[thaddy at thaddy.com]

No, it's about the K&R compatibility.
That's all, nothing more, nothing less.
It has always been there for an array of char (old c style, now 
ansichar) ) in Delphi.

On 25-Feb-15 6:08 PM, Jonas Maebe wrote:
> On 25/02/15 17:02, thaddy at thaddy.com wrote:
>> @ Florian.
>>
>> You closed the typecast from array of char to string issue.
> http://bugs.freepascal.org/view.php?id=27530
>
>> Maybe you are right,
>> I just can prove that every d2-xe7 adds a #0, so a cast (partially,
>> agreed) works in delphi and not in fpc.
> It's unrelated to the terminating #0. It's about the hidden length and
> other metadata that is stored before the dynamic array and the string.
> This data is not compatible in either FPC or in Delphi. Delphi happens
> to store the length data in the same way, but other data for strings is
> not present with dynamic arrays (as your own test in comment 0081403 shows).
>
> If you were to pass such typecasted arrays to arbitrary Delphi routines
> that expect ansistrings, you'll also get garbage results there in
> certain cases (because of missing code page information, so arbitrary
> data before the dynamic array will be interpreted as code page -- in
> fact, in principle this can even cause crashes, in case the memory
> coming before the dynamic array has not been mapped).
>
> You'll probably also get memory corruption if you assign the result of
> the typecast to an ansistring, then set the dynamic array reference to
> nil (so the ansistring contains the last reference) and then set the
> ansistring to an empty string (because Delphi will then probably try to
> free a pointer that starts 16 or 32 bytes before the "string" data,
> while in case of a dynamic array it starts fewer bytes before the array
> data -- at least in FPC, but probably in Delphi too).
>
>> I suggest you reconsider this. The raw pointer cast should work, which
>> means an array of char should have a hidden terminator as well as a
>> hidden pre.
> A dynamic array and an ansistring are two completely unrelated types.
> There is no reason why an explicit typecasts between them should work.
>
>
> Jonas
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