It’s a real pain setting default values for records in Pascal at compile time.
Every other language seems to get this right but it’s a constant issue in
Pascal. The new "class operator Initialize” feature goes a long way in helping
this but it’s still a little annoying that the function is down in the
implementation and taking up space plus requires scrolling etc… Static class
methods help also but again the function is detached from the record and needs
to be called manually.
Why can’t we just do something simple like this? A simple meta programming hack
to dump the “default” section at the start of the scope the variable is
declared in so we don’t have to do this ourselves every time. It probably
breaks down for init’ing records but for compiler types it seems pretty simple.
type
TMyRecord = record
public
i: integer;
s: string;
default
i := 1;
s := 'foo';
end;
var
myRec: TMyRecord; default; // if no default section is specified then
use FillChar(this, sizeof(this), 0);
begin
// the compiler copy/pastes the variables "default" section at start of
the scope
myRec.i := 1;
myRec.s := 'foo';
end;
Regards,
Ryan Joseph
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