[fpc-pascal] Array clearing

[Ryan Joseph]

> On Apr 4, 2017, at 10:10 PM, Sven Barth via fpc-pascal <fpc-pascal at lists.freepascal.org> wrote:
> 
> While your statement regarding allocation might be true you must not
> forget that a dynamic array consists of a meta data block (length,
> reference count) that is located directly in front of the data block. So
> even if the memory blocks would be allocated consecutively then there'd
> still be the meta data blocks inbetween.
> 
> If you already know that your dynamic arrays only have a specific size
> (for matrices used in games that should usually be the case) then you're
> better off with using a static array:
> 
> === code begin ===
> 
> type
>  TMatrix = array[0..2, 0..2, 0..2] of LongInt;
> 
> === code end ===
> 
> There you can use FillChar() as much as you want as that is indeed a
> single memory block containing 9 LongInt elements.

Yeah after all this talk, I’m going to use array[0..0, 0..0, 0..0] and allocate the memory myself to avoid overhead and confusion. Thanks for explaining everything to me but this time going low level makes the most sense.

Regards,
	Ryan Joseph