[fpc-pascal] Illogical automatic dereferencing

[Henry Vermaak]

2009/10/10 Jürgen Hestermann <juergen.hestermann at gmx.de>:
>
> It is illogical that I am able to enumerate a pointer as if it was an array.
> So the brackets do the dereferencing automatically. When I write X[1] it
> assumes I meant X^[1]. To the user it behaves the same as if X was an array
> instead of a pointer to an array. There is no difference in syntax which is
> wrong IMO. It's not wonder that many users think it *is* an array.

I can't understand what you are trying to say.  An array is a pointer
to where the elements of the array resides in memory.  How else do you
think it works?  Can you explain what would x[1] mean if it isn't
dereferenced?

>
> That's the same as if I could use square brackets for an integer and the
> compiler assumes I meant to pick up one of the bytes. Strict type checking
> was a fundamental goal of Pascal but is has now been weakended by C-style
> creaping into it. If you are forced to use the first element of an array in
> situatons where you wanted to specify the whole array it is illogical. And
> it's not that pascal programmers are less accustomed to pointers, but they
> are less accustomed to obscure compiler magic. It has become fashionable to
> *hide* such things ("you don't need to know the details") and the syntax
> doesn't tell the users either which provokes such mistakes.

No, it's not weakened by C-style all of a sudden, it's _always_ been
like this.  As I've been trying to explain to you, there's no "obscure
compiler magic", if you put the brackets there, the compiler
dereferences.

Henry