[fpc-pascal] Static local variables available?

[Bo Berglund]

I am trying to clean up an existing application where handling of
incoming serial data is done inside an event function OnRxData() of
the serial component.
I want to move the processing into a regular procedure so I can later
add a different hardware channel (TCP/IP) as a user choice.

Now when looking at the existing code in the RxData() procedure I see
that there is a while loop retrieving one character at a time from the
serial port and processing it. In the processing these characters are
stuffed into a temp string buffer until the complete packet is ready.

If I divide the single procedure into two where the event procedure
would have the while loop extracting the character and then call a
handling procedure with the char as argument then the processor cannot
have the while, but it must have the buffer...

The only way I could imagine this to work is if:
1) I use a globally defined string variable as buffer
2) It is somehow possible to define the buffer as a static local var.

So since I don't really want to use a global, is it possible to
declare a local variable static in the sense that it retains its
values across calls to the procedure?
If so how is it done?

-- 
Bo Berglund
Developer in Sweden