From memory (which is not as good as it use to be), Delphi 1*
introduced variable length strings, String[32] was a string of up to 32
characters (I think it's actually size was 33 bytes - an extra byte to
indicate length stored in position 0). Prior to that strings were
always 256 bytes (1 length byte and 255 character bytes) - which when
you only have 64k of memory....
*It may have been a version of Turbo Pascal.
Alister Christie
Computers for People
Ph: 04 471 1849 Fax: 04 471 1266
http://www.salespartner.co.nz
Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/salespartner
PO Box 13085
Johnsonville
Wellington
On 17/01/2012 9:48 p.m., Jolyon Smith wrote:
@Stefan
Of course there are reasons to use short strings, just as there are
reasons for using ANSIString, RawByteString and all the other string
types. Horses for courses.
In the case of short strings, the reasons are the same reasons there
always were - most especially for use in records used for structured
file access (file of <record type>). And I am not so sure about the
idea that 255 bytes are always allocated - surely the whole point of a
declared short string type of a specified length is that it will hold
a string of that declared length, come what may.
Otherwise using file of <record type> containing short string fields
would never have worked!
+0.02
Jolyon
_______________________________________________
NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi mailing list
Post: [email protected]
Admin: http://delphi.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/delphi
Unsubscribe: send an email to [email protected] with
Subject: unsubscribe
_______________________________________________
NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi mailing list
Post: [email protected]
Admin: http://delphi.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/delphi
Unsubscribe: send an email to [email protected] with
Subject: unsubscribe
