Delphi attributes and ordinal (simple) types

Submitted by st on Tue, 24/05/2016 - 16:28

The custom attributes don't work with ordinal (simple) type aliases in Delphi including last version XE 10.

Delphi

Installing Delphi 7 on Windows 7/8/10/Server 2012

Submitted by st on Tue, 19/01/2016 - 10:36

How to install and use Delphi 7 and help files on Windows 8/10 or Server 2012.

Delphi

Bit-packed structure (record) in Free Pascal and Delphi

Submitted by st on Sat, 19/12/2015 - 11:58

Here is the code explaining some methods to pack bit accessing logic in your program.

program project1;
 
type
  TRec1 = packed record // Doesn't pack at all
    b1, b2, b3, b4, b5, b6, b7, b8, b9, b10, b11, b12, b13, b14, b15, b16: boolean;
  end;
 
  TRec2 = bitpacked record // Free Pascal specific
    b1, b2, b3, b4, b5, b6, b7, b8, b9, b10, b11, b12, b13, b14, b15, b16: boolean;
  end;
 
  TRecByte = (b1, b2, b3, b4, b5, b6, b7, b8, b9, b10, b11, b12, b13, b14, b15, b16);
  TRecBytes = set of TRecByte;
var
  r1: TRec1;
  r2: TRec2;
  s1: TRecBytes;

Programming

Delphi |
Free Pascal

Watching heap memory usage in Free Pascal / Delphi

Submitted by st on Sun, 19/07/2015 - 19:10

Free Pascal (like Delphi) provide some useful functions to watch heap memory state in your application.

function GetHeapStatus: THeapStatus;

Testing

Delphi |
Free Pascal

Why need to specify unit names?

Submitted by st on Fri, 10/07/2015 - 22:40

In the previous article "Crack C# namespaces in 30 seconds" I demonstrated how to make error having no idea about it. So you will have a lovely time in debugging. But in C# you're condemned to use using directive or your code will be unreadable with all these horrible specifiers

Delphi |
Free Pascal

Delphi and Free Pascal bencmark: array vs TList vs dynamic array

Submitted by st on Mon, 25/05/2015 - 20:19

Let's perform a simple benchmark testing the random and sequential access to arrays and lists. I would like to compare:

static array with predefined size (allocated on stack)
TList container class (allocated on heap)
dynamic array (allocated on heap)
generic Delphi TList or Free Pascal TFPGList (allocated on heap)

I use an array/list of 10M elements of integer and varaint data type. You can change the type definition in "type" section if need to test other cases.

Testing

Delphi |
Free Pascal

Make error "Fatal: Command arguments too long"

Submitted by st on Tue, 06/01/2015 - 09:52

This bug is reproduced on Delphi 7 and C++Builder 6 at least (probably in later versions too) when starting Borland make utility. Indeed, the message "Fatal: Command arguments too long" and the real problem are as like as chalk and cheese.

Check the length of your PATH variable. In my case the length was > 400 characters. Deleting some paths reduced the length down to 300-350 characters and solve the problem.