[fpc-pascal] Re: Initializing Records Automatically

[Jonas Maebe]

On 24 Mar 2008, at 12:53, L wrote:

> So a record with an ansistring and an integer.. for example even  
> local scope..
>
> Will be all zeros?
>
> procedure test;
> var somerec: Tsomerec;
> begin
> // these checks are okay?
> if somerec.astring = ''  if somerec.someint = 0
>
> end;
>
> i.e. above is not random data?

The ansistring is initialised on entry, the someint is not. The reason  
that refcounted fields simply have to be initialised, is that  
otherwise you'd get a crash as soon as you'd try to assign something  
to them (since an assignment is basically "increfcount(source);  
decrefcount(target); pointer(target):=pointer(source)", which would go  
horribly wrong if target could contain garbage).


Jonas