[fpc-pascal] Basic Sockets in FreePascal

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Michael Van Canneyt wrote:
> On Sun, 26 Jul 2015, Coyo wrote:
> 
>> I have read on the wiki and documentation that FreePascal does not 
>> have any native support for socket handling, and that you need an 
>> external third party library to have any support for it.
> 
> This is not correct. Of course Free Pascal has native support for socket 
> handling ?

Knowing the URL of that wiki page would be useful, so that we can fix it 
if it really is broken. What version of FPC is the documentation for?

>> I want to write an IRC bot in FreePascal, but I need the ability to 
>> both make outgoing connections to IRC servers or other bots of the 
>> same kind, as well as accept incoming connections from other bots.
>>
>> I'd prefer as straightforward TCP sockets support as I can get. Any 
>> advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance for your 
>> time and patience.
> 
> Just use the sockets or ssockets units. The first is plain pascal and a 
> straightforward interface as you encounter it in any C implementation, 
> the second is using classes.

Seconded, it's something I do on a regular basis when I have to do 
something with a non-standard protocol. However I think there's a couple 
of points worth considering.

The first is that the Pascal /language/ doesn't have implicit support 
for sockets, you need to import an appropriate unit/library. That's 
going to be the case for almost all general-purpose languages, with the 
exception of things like Perl and Python which try to build in 
everything a programmer might need including the kitchen sink.

The second is that for standard protocols like FTP and HTTP it might be 
better to use a third-party library to avoid reinventing the wheel when 
it comes to security etc., some of these- for example Synapse- are 
routinely used by almost everybody but aren't packaged with FPC because 
their developers prefer to stay independent.

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

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