[fpc-pascal] Class field property access

[Ryan Joseph]

I found a restriction in properties which is a little disappointing. I get there’s probably some objective of safety but Pascal is a direct memory access language so I don’t understand why properties have this unique restriction when I could do the same thing using functions (pointers can’t be dereferenced in properties either). Shouldn’t I as the programmer get to decide whether the property is safe or not based upon when I call it?

type
  TB = class
    x: integer;
  end;

type
  TA = class
    private
      b: TB;
    public
      property x: integer read b.x;	// ERROR: Must be a record/object type
  end;


Regards,
	Ryan Joseph