[fpc-pascal] readonly variables

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Sun, 29 Nov 2009, Anthony Walter wrote:

> Jonas,
>
> Thank you. I certainly will make an attempt to tone down a few of my
> remarks which I admit were inflammatory. I assure everyone here
> though, my purpose in conversing on these lists is to help improve
> FPC, so far by discussing easy to resolve and reproduce technical
> points. I personally find it quite irksome to when someone repeatedly
> interrupts a discussion by injecting false information. Especially so
> when they continue despite being presented with easily verified facts.
> My poor manners put aside for the moment, if someone states ~this is
> nowhere in documentation~ and is then fact checked showing the
> opposite, I expect to hear back from him with an "oh yes, you are
> correct. the documentation does contain that information".

If we're dealing with verifiable facts, let us look at my mail. I quote:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
I believe that. I know it is so in practice, but nowhere it says in the 
Pascal language specification that this is guaranteed by the compiler.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

The FPC (or Delphi) documentation is not the same as the Pascal Language 
specificiation.

The Pascal language specification is an ISO document, freely available.
I was referring to the latter.

In fact, the Pascal language specs explicitly state that the initial
state of a variable is undefined unless an initial value is specified; 
I just re-checked that, please see http://standardpascal.org/iso10206.pdf
(be warned, it is not easy reading...)

So next time, before you get angry, please reconsider: 
There may be some - entirely unintentional - confusion in used terminology.

Michael.