[fpc-pascal] Illogical automatic dereferencing

[Jürgen Hestermann]

> 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?  

just look at:

type ArrayType = array[1..10] of char;
var  X  : ArrayType;
      PX : ^ArrayType

What is the difference between X and PX?

X is an array of char which can be accessed directly. The identifier X 
means the address in memory where the array elements 1..10 are stored. 
The address of X (@X) is the address of the array (first element).

XP is just a pointer to such a structure. It's not the array itself. The 
address of XP (@XP) is the address of the pointer, not the array.

Sizeof(X) is 10 bytes.
Sizeof(PX) is 4 bytes.

Still you can use X[1] and PX[1]. That's illogical.

> No, it's not weakened by C-style all of a sudden, it's _always_ been
> like this.  

It has never been like this (in Pascal). That's C-style.