Hello Everyone:

I've got an array of records that looks something like this:

type
      node = record
            foo : array[1..10] of integer;
            bar : array[1..10] of integer;
      end
var
     graph : array[1..5] of node;

begin...

However, the arrays hold different amounts of numbers. So node[1].foo might hold 5 numbers while node[2].foo might hold only 2.

My Question...
Is there a way to initialize these numbers somehow. It seems the compiler won't allow me to partly fill the arrays. If I use them, it appears I have to use them all the way.

Thank you in advance,
Clay

You are talking about dynamic array:

type
      node = record
            foo : array of integer;
            bar : array of integer;
      end
var
     graph : array of node;
SetLength(graph, 5); // Gives you 0..4 elements
SetLength(graph.foo, 10); //Gives you 0..9 elements
...

Ido

I would do it like this.

const cntmax = 5;
var cnt : longint;
procedure init_counter;
begin
 cnt := 0;
end;
procedure init( v1 , v2 , v3 , v4 , v5 , v6 , v7 , v8 , v9 , v10 : integer );
begin
 if cnt < cntmax then begin
  with graph[ cnt ] do begin
   foo[ 1 ] := v1;
   foo[ 2 ] := v2;
    ...
   foo[ 10 ] := v10;
  end;
  inc( cnt );
 end;
end;
init_counter;
init_arr( 34 , 56 , 33 , 44, 44, 56, .. , .. , .., 77 );
init_arr( 34 , 56 , 33 , 44, 44, 56, .. , .. , .., 77 );
init_arr( 34 , 56 , 33 , 44, 44, 56, .. , .. , .., 77 );
init_arr( 34 , 56 , 33 , 0,0,0,0,0,0,0 );

How do people initialize large amounts of information in practice? Do they just read in files and convert them over dynamically?

(Sorry for the potentially stupid questions. I'm just coming to Pascal.)

Clay

On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 1:54 PM, Rainer Stratmann <

AFAIK no. You'll have to explicitly initialize them with '0'.

Best regards,
Flávio

Clay Stuart wrote

How do people initialize large amounts of information in practice? Do they just read in files and convert them over dynamically?

There is an example for pre-initialized variable length arrays in ide\editoroptions.pp line 550 and before.

EditorOptionsFoldDefaults: array[TLazSyntaxHighlighter] of TEditorOptionsFoldRecord =
( (Count: 0; Info: nil), // none
(Count: 0; Info: nil), // text
(Count: 23; Info: {$IFDEF
), // Freepas
(Count: 23; Info: {$IFDEF
), // pas
(Count: 3; Info: {$IFDEF
), // lfm

it uses pointers though

   TEditorOptionsFoldInfoList = Array [0..999] of TEditorOptionsFoldInfo;
   PEditorOptionsFoldInfoList = ^TEditorOptionsFoldInfoList;
   TEditorOptionsFoldRecord = record
     Count: Integer;
     Info: PEditorOptionsFoldInfoList;
   end;

The pointer does not care, that it points to an array defined with a different length....
of course, you must ensure not to access elements outside the boundaries, as all the nice things like range-checks will no longer work....

Afaik the array declaration isn't even needed, just using pointers would already do the trick....

Ok. Thanks everyone.

Clay