OK. It seems to have been a C macro.

But I doesn't understand it completely :

In the C headers, the macros is defined as follows:

#define CFSTR(cStr) __CFStringMakeConstantString(cStr "")

... thus calls:

/* This function is private and should not be used directly */ /*
* __CFStringMakeConstantString()
*
* Availability:
* Non-Carbon CFM: not available
* CarbonLib: in CarbonLib 1.0 and later
* Mac OS X: in version 10.0 or later
*/
EXTERN_API_C( CFStringRef )
__CFStringMakeConstantString(const char * cStr);

In the define there is 2 args, but I see only one param in the function prototype, how come ?

A tip, concerning translation macros: If you cannot do what you did above, you might write a small function which does what the macro did. The function can be made inline, to make it as fast as a macro. (Of course not all macros can be translated to functions)

Olle

BTW Rolf, I divide the discussion in manageble pieces :)

In the CFString.h of the CoreFoundation framework it's defined as

#define CFSTR(cStr) __CFStringMakeConstantString("" cStr "")

but that doesn't really matter.

"" is the same as '' in Pascal: it's an empty string. In C, to concatenate constant string, you don't put a "+" in between them, you just write them next to each other. So In Pascal that would be

__CFStringMakeConstantString('' + cStr + '');

This is probably to force some typecasting for certain ambiguous C-constructs. Pascal shouldn't need this.

Jonas

I would like to add only that the CFSTR routine when declared as follows:

   function CFSTR(cStr: ConstCStringPtr): CFStringRef;
        external name '___CFStringMakeConstantString';

does really work and gives correct results when called from a Free Pascal program on OS X.

Please note the three undersores. Please note also that for this to work, ConstCStringPtr has to be declared as PChar in MacTypes.p.

In Free Pascal this is so much more elegant compared to the macro in C, isn´t it?

Rolf