[fpc-pascal]2 questions on ansistrings

[Marco van de Voort]

> 1. If a segment is deleted from an ansistring, e.g. ...
> 
> s := 'abcdefghijklmnop';
> delete (s, 5, 6);
> 
> yielding s = 'abcdelmnop'
> 
> ...does the system "shift" the 'lmnop' to the left, or does the string
> get hooked together with pointers, thus saving much time with long strings?

No shifting, ansistrings are not sparse (at least not in this implementation.

Note that sparse strings save time with this kind of operations, but
cost quite some extra time when parsing them.
 
> 2. Is there any documentation yet of the ansistring internals?  If not,
> what file contains the source?

I don't know, but the file is inc/astrings.inc  Maybe there are some
asm parts in <processor>.inc too

The idea is quite simple. Ansistrings  essentially are pchars, with
alloocation size, length and reference count prefixed on  negative
offsets of variable^.

The fact that it has the length, also means that it can contain any
character.