[fpc-pascal] FPC Advanced Records

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Jonas Maebe wrote:
> On 09 Mar 2012, at 21:38, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:
> 
>> Can an Advanced Record, i.e. a record which as well as having fields has at least one embedded function, be safely used as a cast or type transfer overlaying unstructured bytes?
> 
> Yes.

Thanks Jonas, I don't think I need to do it but I thought it was a fair 
question: better safe than sorry.

OK, so hopefully I can get away with another. I'm looking at a program 
written in Delphi, which reads a file containing the image of an IBM 
mainframe tape. This has a record:

Type TAWSHeader=Record
        ThisSize: Word;
..

ThisSize is defined as being in Intel-style little-endian format, so I'm 
going to have problems if compiling the program for SPARC or 
(hypothetically) zSeries which are big-endian. If I understand things 
correctly I can do this:

Type TAWSHeader=Record
        ThisSizeLE: Word;
        function ThisSize: Word;
..

but is there any way to define something like an endianness-correcting 
type, i.e.:

Type TAWSHeader=Record
        ThisSize: WordLE;
..

where by the time ThisSize is accessed any disparity has been corrected?

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]