[fpc-pascal] AnsiString address changed

[Hairy Pixels]

Curious, why did the address of "s" change here? Shouldn't the AnsiString be incrementing a reference  count and not actually changing the actual pointer or copying?

Correct me if I'm wrong, AnsiString is ref counted when passing in/out functions but copies on assignment so technically no two AnsiStrings can be shared in two locations, which makes sense because if they were resized they would invalidate each others memory anyways when ReAllocMem is called.

I guess if that's true then there must be only pointer to any AnsiString in any given scope otherwise they could resize and corrupt their memory.

Not sure if that makes sense, I'm struggling to understand myself. :)

============================================

  procedure PassString(s: AnsiString); 
  begin
    writeln(hexstr(@s));
  end;

var
  s1: AnsiString;
begin
  s1 := '123';
  writeln(hexstr(@s1));
  PassString(s1);
  writeln(hexstr(@s1));
end.

Output:

000000010259AC00
000000016DBC2F80
000000010259AC00

Regards,
	Ryan Joseph