Quoting shifted soul :
Matt
I know that if standards are not used then the
programmer will go into a black hole. But if FPC is a
'new' compiler why not extend the standards.
FPC is not a 'new' compiler. It has been in development for a number of years, I certainly first heard about it over 3 years ago. There have been two releases of Delphi, and Kylix since that point. New, no.
If we don't go ahead, we can't grow. I explain :
standards are made step by step, and any new thing
added to a standard is viewed badly by the others.
My point was that the FPC core team (the guys that, let's face it, make the compiler work for all of us 'users') keep complaining about a lack of time to improve the compiler. But in all honesty, with a focused objective they will waste less time adding 'standards' that no one actually wants. Let me qualify that a little; no one has yet created a compiler that meets the standard that everyone is looking towards, and there is no call for one. By creating one, surely all they are doing is wasting time (whether this be a lot or a little) on a specification that essentially is worthless. The spec is nearly 10 years old - if no one has created a commercial compiler yet that uses the standard, why do we need one? Using a standard, just because it's there isn't the correct way to work, especially in time constrained projects.
I give an example : I am a student, and when I said for my profs that I
can use object into pascal (with BP), he formally said that it is impossible
and if a compiler do it (compiling a pascal source code with objects) this is
a wrong one (does not meet the pascal standrds!).
He's right. The Pascal standard had no OO. The *Object* Pascal (either the old style TP/BP or Delphi standard) does. Object Pascal is to Pascal, as C++ is to C. 'Object Pascal' is not the same as 'Standard Pascal', it's a super set of it.
Then if they (the compiler's developpers) worked with your says (and
the says of my profs), now we (me and you) will use the hex coding
only ! You know now what is the meaning of 'going ahead'?
:-)
I said that the Delphi standard was the one to aim for, not that OO was bad. You obviously mis-understood what I was saying.
NB : The original message I send was not about standards, but about a
technical issue in FPC : Why does it work?
It doesn't work. You must call the CONSTRUCTOR' to CREATE an instance of your class. I already mentioned this in my post. Try the following (tested with FPC v1.02 Win32):
Program ...;
{your code unaltered}
BEGIN
b := a.a1; //YOU MUST CALL THE CONSTRUCTOR
try
b.x := 10;
write(b.x);
finally
b.free; //YOU MUST *FREE* YOUR INSTANCE
end;
END.
However!!!! YOu *must* call your destructor 'Destroy' and override it. This is true even in the standard that OBJFPC uses!!!!!
Matt
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