[fpc-pascal] Record operator for assignment

[Ryan Joseph]

Instead of making constructors and doing busy work It would be nice if Free Pascal could let you assign records outside of type blocks like:

rec := (x: 0; y: 0; z: 0);

Why isn’t this possible btw? I saw some C++ code do this and it seems like an obvious solution that should have existed 20 years ago. The feature exists for type blocks so why not just enable it for other parts of code?

I had another idea to make this a little simpler by using open arrays and operator overloading. The compiler doesn’t permit this however. Is it a bug, my code or just a limitation?

============


type
	TMyRec = record
		x, y, z: integer;
		class operator Explicit(v: array of integer): TMyRec;
	end;

class operator TMyRec.Explicit(v: array of integer): TMyRec;
begin
	result.x := v[0];
	result.y := v[1];
	result.z := v[2];
end;


var
	rec: TMyRec;

rec := TMyRec([1, 2, 3]); // Illegal type conversion: "Set Of Byte" to "TMyRec"

Regards,
	Ryan Joseph