[fpc-pascal]range-checking observations and questions

[Andy Sy]

Apparently, activating -Cr is needed to enable enforcement of
compile time constant range checking as well.

The ff. program:

program blah;
var
   E: array[2..4] of Integer;
begin
   E[10]:=15;
end.

will compile albeit with a warning.  Only when -Cr is enabled
will the range violation become an error.  Is this kind of freedom
intentional and will it serve certain purposes?


For arrays of characters, the range checking is even looser.
I have noticed that the ff range violation:

program blah;
var
   D: array[2..4] of char;
begin
   D:='ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ';
   Writeln(D);
end.

is completely ignored whether -Cr is enabled or not.  No
error, no warning.

Question 1:
Will such code result in memory corruption somewhere in both the
cases where runtime range checking is enabled and the one where
it is not enabled?

Question 2:
Is this something that needs to be fixed or is there a
philosophy/explanation behind this behaviour?

Question 3:
Is this a special case for char arrays/strings only and will
never happen with other types?


Note: I am using FPC 1.0.10