[fpc-pascal] Feature announcement: Dynamic array extensions

[Ryan Joseph]

> On May 25, 2018, at 12:43 PM, Michael Van Canneyt <michael at freepascal.org> wrote:
> 
> I think the above is "right", and completely equivalent to sets, which are in some ways
> like an array: a "collection" of same typed values.
> 
> To add an element to a set you also do
>  MySet:=MySet+[aValue];
> 
> That said, sets do have
>  Include(MySet,AValue);
> to include a single value.
> 
> Maybe this syntax can be extended to dynamic arrays.

We can do + operator overloads on array classes though so it’s not totally crazy to see this syntax in code. Ultimately if it’s optimized well doing [xx] is no big problem I suppose.

Having said that my feeling with dynamic arrays is that they’re more difficult to use than collection classes and lack basic functionality (until perhaps just now) so why use them? I just got burned really bad by some call to FPC_INTERLOCKEDINCREMENT64 from dynamic arrays which killed performance (who knows why) so I had to pull them out of all my code just in case.

The procedural syntax of Insert(arr, 0, value) is less enticing than arr.Insert(0, value) also but again we can fix that with type helpers.

Regards,
	Ryan Joseph