On 14/04/2019 18:04, Martin Frb wrote:
On 14/04/2019 16:05, Ryan Joseph wrote:
On Apr 14, 2019, at 3:15 AM, Sven Barth via fpc-pascal
<fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org> wrote:
Your idea requires exceptions as well. The compiler is not capable
checking whether valid entries are passed in at compile time except
for simple, constant cases, so runtime checks are needed and the
only way to abort something is by exceptions.
My idea didn’t require the procedure to exit so I don’t see where an
exception would be needed. It just says if a param was flagged you
would need to check for nil before dereferencing other you get a
compile time error.
First of all the max you should get is a note (warning, maybe). But
never a compile time error.
As for your feature of getting a note from the compiler, if you deref a
param (or other variable) that according to the compilers awareness
could be nil at the time.
There is on need to say "optional".
Technically any nil-able var could be nil. So the compiler note should
be for any such variable. Exactly like currently the "variable not
initialized".
The downside: That would flood current code with compiler-notes. Because
any param could be nil, even if the programmer has documented somewhere
that this is not allowed.
But if pre-conditions where available, this could be combined.
The compiler could assume that if you wrote pre-conditions for a method,
and that if you did non add "foo <> nil" to those conditions, then you
expect that foo can be nil.
And in that case the compiler could add appropriate notes, if it finds
you do not check for nil.
Existing code has no pre-conditions and is not affected. New code then
must contain this.
Or the warning could apply to all code, but by default is not generated.
You can enable it for each unit via commandline switch or directive.
Again no "optional" needed.
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