Am Montag, den 23.10.2006, 20:28 -0400 schrieb David Mears: > Michael Van Canneyt wrote: > > On Mon, 23 Oct 2006, David Mears wrote: > > > > > >> is this bit of syntactic weirdness a fpc element, or from delphi. I've > >> largely been away from pascal since the early 90s, mostly only using it to > >> write dos-y non-object-y utilities, for which it excels. > >> typed constants seem to basically to be like the static keyword from c.. > >> but > >> not a var modifier.. It just seems it should be a modifier for var. such > >> as > >> var st:string static;.. since.. constant is usually pretty wrapped up in > >> the > >> meaning of "not changing." and that it has a constant, initialized, > >> reserved > >> place in memory is.. well.. abstract. Especially since you can initialize > >> your variables now, then the only thing that makes it special is that it > >> is a > >> global variable with a local scope. > >> > >> I'm not the sort who thinks pascal should be C, because I hate having to > >> work > >> with C or it's work likes. I just think that being able to call something > >> constant and change it muggles the syntactic clarity of the language, > >> which is > >> otherwise rather good. > >> > > > > Initialized constants are deprecated, and should be replaced by initialized > > variables, as in Delphi: > > > > Var > > A : String = 'Some string'; > > > > "Real" constants (in the sense of 'not changing') do not need to be typed in > > the first place so > > > > Const > > A = 'Some String'; > > > > Will do just fine. You now have both possibilities and they each have clear > > and unambiguous meaning. > >
> I was less interested in the initialized part- which I'm happy you can > do with variables now but would not be overly concerned setting them in > code as I always had to in the past, as the "It should be stressed that > typed constants are initialized at program start. This is also true of > local typed constants." Which I take it to mean that they retain their > value when out of scope, which provides encapsulation at a level that > can only otherwise be done with objects. > > like > function HowManyBirds:integer; > const n: integer = 1; > begin > n:=n * 2; > end; > > ignoring that the function here is useless, that's a useful ability.. > while you can define variables anywhere not in procedure, nothing else > quite does that. It's just I'd rather it be > var n: integer = 1; static; > var n: integer = 1; fixed; > or some such. It makes more sense linguistically, in an otherwise very > sensible language. :) Why don't you just type and initialize your constants? I'm doing it all the time like this (from a real world working program): const H5FILE_NAME : string = 'SDS_P.h5'; DATASETNAME : string = 'IntArray'; That should do what you want IIRC, Marc _______________________________________________ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
