[fpc-pascal]I don't understand value typecast

[Jonas Maebe]

On zondag, juni 30, 2002, at 11:25 , Luis Del Aguila wrote:

> In the manual explain that the value typecast doesn't work, when the 
> type
> size of the expression and the size of the type cast  not must be the 
> same.
> (page 58. ref.pdf)
> But this program compile.
>
> Var a:integer;
>       b:char;
>       c:boolean;
>       d:word;
> Begin
>    a:=integer('A');
>    b:=Char(4875);
>    c:=boolean(100);
> End.
>
> How work the value typecast?

I think the manual is incomplete. For ordinal-to-ordinal type casts 
(integers/chars/booleans/range-types) and possibly also 
ordinal-to-enumerations and vice versa, this same-size requirement 
doesn't exist. In such a case,

a) when going from a smaller signed type to a larger signed type (e.g. 
longint_var := longint(shortint_var)), the effect is the same as when 
you would do a regular assignment (so if shortint_var contains $ff = -1 
above, longintvar will become $ffffffff = -1)
b) when going from a smaller unsigned type to any larger type (e.g. 
longint_var := longint(byte_var)), the value of the smaller type is 
simply zero-extended (so if byte_var contains $ff = 255 above, 
longint_var will become $ff = 255)
c) when going from a larger to a smaller type, you just take the n lower 
bytes of the larger type and copy them into the smaller type, where n = 
the size in bytes of the smaller type.

Char, Boolean and all enumeration types (which don't have an explicit 
lower bound set that's negative) are treated as unsigned.


Jonas