[fpc-devel] tkLString vs tkAString

[Marc Weustink]

On 30-11-2021 13:37, Michael Van Canneyt via fpc-devel wrote:
> 
> 
> On Tue, 30 Nov 2021, Marc Weustink via fpc-devel wrote:
> 
>> Hi,
>>
>> I ran into an issue with a piece of ported Delphi (6) code and RTTI. 
>> Part of the Delphi code was based on strings with a RTTI type 
>> tkLString where in FPC the type appeared to be tkAString. Fixing this 
>> was easy, but it made me wonder what the difference is between them.
>> From the documentation:
>>  Source position: rttih.inc line 22
>>   type TTypeKind = (
>>   ...
>>   tkLString,  Longstring property.
>>   tkAString,  Ansistring property.
>>
>>
>> So there is apparently a LongString type and an AnsiString type. 
>> However if you search (google) the documentation on LongString, you 
>> only find references to AnsiString.
>>
>> My question: What is the difference (if any) ?
> 
> This dates from long ago...
> 
> Longstring was an idea for a shortstring/ansistring kind of string - 
> unlimited length but no reference counting.
> 
> But it was never fully implemented.

Ah, that explains. So technically the delphi tkLString is the fpc 
tkAString and the fpc tkLString does not exist.

Marc