[fpc-pascal] Converting old pascal written for Pascal/MT+ compiler

[Jacob Kroon]

Hi Tomas,

On 4/4/23 09:01, Tomas Hajny via fpc-pascal wrote:

[cut]

> You don't need to change "var" to "const" - if you want to ensure the 
> variables to persist in between the function/procedure runs, you need to 
> move them to the global level, i.e. outside of the functions/procedures. 
> It is not advisable as a general practice (to keep all variables 
> globally), because then you might e.g. access the same variable from 
> multiple functions by mistake, but it would probably solve your issue. 
> Obviously, you might need to solve potential conflicts if you use the 
> same variable names in multiple functions/procedures (e.g. by prepending 
> the function/procedure name to the variable name or something like that).
> 

I could move them to global scope, and add a prefix to avoid name 
collisions, but using a "const" section seems more readable to me since 
I don't need to add a prefix.

The wiki page says (https://wiki.freepascal.org/Const):

"The declaration const in a Pascal program is used to inform the 
compiler that certain identifiers which are being declared are 
constants, that is, they are initialized with a specific value at 
compile time as opposed to a variable which is initialized at run time.

However, the default setting in Free Pascal is to allow const 
identifiers to be re-assigned to."

Then it says there is a flag to make reassigning to a const variable an 
error. But if I ignore that, it would seem this is just what I need, 
since this seems to make the variable have a whole-program lifetime, no ?

What is the technical downside to using "const", or is it just cosmetic ?

Regards,
Jacob