[fpc-pascal] Adding file to string to the RTL

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Tue, 6 Oct 2020, Ryan Joseph via fpc-pascal wrote:

>
>
>> On Oct 6, 2020, at 2:12 AM, Michael Van Canneyt via fpc-pascal <fpc-pascal at lists.freepascal.org> wrote:
>> 
>> I added the following functions to the sysutils unit (rev 47056):
>
> Great, thanks Michael.
>
> I've always used AnsiString so why is UnicodeString preferable here?

If the original file contains UTF16, it will save you a conversion.

I usually do not use UTF16, you clearly also not, but other people do, 
and we try to cater for them as well :-)

> So is the idea we need to specify an UTF-8 encoding for unicode otherwise
> it assumes ASCII format?

It will assume the system unit default encoding. What that is depends on your OS.
Mac, Linux: UTF8, windows: ANSI, unless you use Lazarus in which case it
will also be UTF8.

(in fact you can set it to any codepage you want, but the above are the defaults)

> I didn't specify the encoding with TStringList
> and I always seemed to get back what I wanted (maybe it sniffed the
> encoding from the file?).

Depending on your environment TStringList will use ANSI or UTF8, just as
above.

Michael.