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Delphi RTL and Language Wisdom

June 26 2007 4:34PM

It's Tuesday and following up my VCL list from yesterday, here my list for the RTL and Object Pascal language:

Learn to create your own TList descendants
Learn to write your own TCollection/TCollectionItem descendants
Use Format
Learn TThread then, understand TThread.Synchronize
Use TFileStream, TStringStream, TMemoryStream
Learn how to use the classes in SyncObjs.pas
Learn to call a function from a dynamically loaded DLL
Use exceptions
Learn when to use stdcall
Learn to use open array parameters
Use the *utils.pas units, DateUtils, StrUtils, MaskUtils, ConvUtils, VarUtils etc.
Learn the Math unit
Use SafeMM
Learn which exceptions the RTL throws
Use try...finally
Read the comments in SysUtils.pas
Call FindClose after calling FindFirst
Learn how to load packages dynamically
Use FindCmdLineSwitch
Just because it's not in Windows.pas doesn't mean it can't be called from Delphi
Learn function inlining
Be careful using "with"
Learn to use interfaces
Use dynamic arrays
Read the Language Reference manual

What am I missing?

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Tags: Development

Permalink | Comments (3)

Why does Delphi 2005 IDE require the .NET framework?Now that Delphi 2005 is out and people are beginning to use it I've seen a number of posts on the Bo...For me Object Pascal is the language Delphi is...The other day DavidI asked "What should we call the language of Delphi 2007 for Win32" and my answer...Community contributions improve Delphi 2007 RTL performanceOne of the areas I've worked on in the Delphi 2007 release is the inclusion of Delphi Community RTL ...

Comments

6/26/2007 7:28:50 PM #

Where can I get SafeMM?

Sebastian Zierer

6/27/2007 1:37:47 AM #

First: always use FreeAndNil(X) instead of X.Free.

Second, the biggest single time-saver for me is my own TMonitoredObject class. It inherits from TObject, but adds a sequential ID number for each instance. If I $DEFINE DEBUG, the constructor and destructor each write a log entry indicating that they've been called, along with the actual class name and ID number. At the end of a program run, the unit that defines TMonitoredObject gives me a list of any objects that haven't been freed. It also tracks double-freeing, although that's less of an issue if you use FreeAndNil. Just insure you always use type TFoo = class(TMonitoredObject) instead of TFoo = class, and you're set. In one fell swoop, it makes memory leaks virtually impossible. I can stick a copy up somewhere if you want to see it, but it's pretty easy to produce just from that description.

Eric TF Bat

6/27/2007 3:20:23 PM #

Sebastian,
Ben Taylor did work on SafeMM though I can't find much about it on the web. I'll dig up what I have about it and get it posted. We use it here to help strictly with memory leak detection.

Steve Trefethen

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