Martin Friebe wrote:
There is Object.InstanceSize, which sounds as if it may be what you
are looking for.
But you have a bigger problem than that.
Thanks - i'll try that.
If any member (object variable) is of a ref-counted type (that is
strings and dynamic arrays), then any "memory copy" will mess up.
Because in the objects memory, there only are the pointers to the data
of strings, and dyn-arrays. If you copy those pointer by hand, then
the reference-counts in the actual string or dyn-array are not updated.
this leads to at least 2 problems.
1)
If the original object was the only holder (or last remaining) of a
reference to this string, and your original or new object is
destroyed, the ref-count goes down to zero => the string is freed, and
the other object points to unallocated memory, or meory allocated to
some new/other data) => crash
2)
Again if, your old object was the only holder, then the ref-count is
still 1. Strings are "copy on modify", => 2 copies of a string share
memory until one is changed (in which case a copy is made). The need
for making the copy is determined by ref-count > 1.
Can this be avoided by using the "UniqueString(..)" method?
Your ref-count is 1 => no copy is made, the new object is updating the
strings of the old object too
Best Regards
Martin
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