[fpc-pascal] function Copy is inconsistent with Delphi

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Tue, 16 Jan 2007, Alexander Todorov wrote:

> Hello,
> i am converting a big Delphi project a part of uses a lexical parser.
> It is dependent on the Copy function which in Delphi is declared:
> 
> function Copy(S; Index, Count: Integer): string;
> 
> and in FPC it is:
> 
> function Copy(const s: string; FromPosition, ToPosition : integer): String;
> 
> 
> Why there are different declarations? I see that the FPC variant is
> used in a lot of places and it is not likely that it will be changed
> to be compatible with Delphi.

As far as I know, The Delphi variant is used also to copy dynamic arrays,
possibly also variant arrays. The above function is a dummy declaration,
as found in the documentation - because in reality it is handled by 
internal system functions (you can search for _copy, _copyvar _objCopy 
etc. in the system unit of delphi).

However, for strings, the behaviour should be the same.

For dynamic arrays, I don't think FPC has a similar function.

Michael.