[fpc-pascal] Is there a StringRefCount() equivalence?

[Martin]

On 30/04/2010 09:22, dmitry boyarintsev wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 7:42 AM, Bihar Anwar<bihar_anwar at rocketmail.com>  wrote:
>    
>> I hope FPC developers will include StringRefCount() to the RTL.
>>      
> Why would you need that?
>    

There are use cases for this.

A while ago I thinking about a string-hash table as a cache for strings.

A text parser would keep track of certain words in the text => pchar to 
the original text wasn't possible, as the original text could be 
relocated. So each time a word needed to be remembered it was 
copy(otext,,a,b).
If the same word needed to be remembered 10 times, then 10 copies would 
be made.

The idea was to keep existing words in a hash table (as proper strings, 
so the entry in the hash table causes the ref to be increased by one). 
Then when a word needed to be remembered, it could be looked up, before 
making a new copy.

If the hash table detects a ref-count of 1, on any word, it can delete 
it, because this is it's own reference.


Martin