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Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/20
Every once in a while I discover an answer I have not yet put on my blog, especially as related answer are always interesting.
This is one that didn’t make it until now: [Wayback/Archive] Exceptions and DLL in Delphi – Stack Overflow (thanks [Wayback/Archive] jpfollenius, [Wayback/Archive] Deltics and [Wayback/Archive] Lars Truijens)
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Posted by jpluimers on 2022/11/16
A long time ago, I posted one of the answers to [Wayback/Archive] Where can I find a comprehensive list of Delphi “compiler magic” declarations? – Stack Overflow
So for my link archive, these are the main ways of assembling an (always incomplete, as only partially documented) list:
System.pas filtered on lines close to “built-in types” and “compiler magic”, containing:
EXTERNALSYM OBJTYPENAME NODEFINE $IFDEF $ELSE$ENDIF$IFEND_ and @ prefixes to method names in DCU files.
–jeroen
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Posted by jpluimers on 2021/12/07
Because I need this eventually, here the full quote of my answer in [Wayback] sorting – How can I get TStringList to sort differently in Delphi – Stack Overflow (The default Sort behaviour is to accommodate i18n sorting in natural order):
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Posted by jpluimers on 2021/08/03
The most current Lex and Yacc for Delphi is [WayBack] GitHub – RomanYankovsky/ndyacclex: Parser generator toolset for Delphi (Yacc & Lex).
It came up during a funny Twitter thread, where one of the Delphi team members asked for it, despite – after decades of asking – there still being no official Delphi grammar available from the Delphi team, nor Google Search skills [WayBack].
Basically a parser generator is only as useful as the grammar you have for it.
There is no open source grammar for Delphi yet, so the best you can start with is from the same author: [WayBack] GitHub – RomanYankovsky/DelphiAST: Abstract syntax tree builder for Delphi
With DelphiAST you can take real Delphi code and get an abstract syntax tree. One unit at time and without a symbol table though.
Relevant tweets:
[WayBack] GitHub – RomanYankovsky/ndyacclex: Parser generator toolset for Delphi (Yacc & Lex).
–jeroen
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Posted by jpluimers on 2021/05/11
Cool Format feature from [WayBack] file – String format procedure similar to writeln – Stack Overflow:
The cool thing about using
Formatis that you use for Format Strings not only to parameterize things likewidthandprecisioninside thatFormat String, but also as parameters like you normally would provide values.You can get very close to using a
widthof 8 and aprecisionof 2, like the example in your question.For instance, to quote the documentation:
Format ('%*.*f', [8, 2, 123.456]);is equivalent to:
Format ('%8.2f', [123.456]);That is a much overlooked feature of
FormatandFormat Strings.
Edit 20250910:
This was part of my answer¹ there to mimic WriteLn formatting behaviour which was not even documented at the now deleted [Wayback/Archive] Standard Routines and I/O.
Normally deleted information like above results in worse information at their current documentation site.
This time however was an exception: the current documentation is better².
¹ the start of my answer:
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Posted by jpluimers on 2021/03/31
Did you ever get this run-time error in a console or test project?
EOleException with message 'Microsoft MSXML is not installed'
It means that CoInitialize or CoInitializeEx needs to be called in the thread that uses MSXML.
Then an easy workaround is to:
System.Win.ComObj in any unit that (indirectly) uses Xml.XMLDoc (for instance any unit using an XML Data Binding generated unit),TProcedure used below)initialization section (which is what VCL TApplication.Initialize does):
if InitProc <> nil then TProcedure(InitProc); // Calls CoInitialize for the main thread and prevents "EOleException with message 'Microsoft MSXML is not installed'"
The initialization section of System.Win.ComObj sets up InitProc to cals CoInitialize for the main thread, which usually suffices for these simple VCL projects, but not for most console or test projects.
Based on ideas I got after reading [WayBack] 为什么LoadXMLDocument在线程类中使用会报错？-CSDN论坛 (for which Google Translate actually does a goot job [Archive.is])
–jeroen
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Posted by jpluimers on 2021/03/24
A while ago, I observed that when compiling, my Delphi IDE would not take into account unsaved changes any more.
This ws in a time when I was tracking down some hard to reproduce problems of code that sometimes would and sometimes would not compile at all.
The solution was this:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Embarcadero\BDS\18.0\Compiling]
"BackgroundCompilation"="False"
Somehow, the Delphi IDE had turned this flag to True without me telling it did, nor me changing an option (heck if you do a “Delphi” “BackgroundCompilation” – Google Search you hardly get any meaningful results).
Luckily, I did remember what happened around the bahaviour change: the compiler had encountered a strange error, and the IDE had become unstable.
With an unstable IDE, I did have seen damage in saved source files in the past, so I always use version control with Delphi as that allows easier to spot file differences.
What I did not anticipate was that it could corrupting my persisted IDE settings, though every now and then.
Sometimes (but not always) these can be early signs too
A “Delphi” “BackgroundCompilation” – Google Search did not get much relevant results. Below are the most relevant ones I could find from it:
Too bad Google does not index the WayBack machine, as I think it contains relevant material that is now hard to find.
So it looks like the feature was introduced somewhere close to Delphi 5:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Borland\Delphi\5.0\Compiling] "Show Compiler Progress"="True" "Warn on Package Rebuild"="-1" "Compile Beep"="0" "Cache Headers"="0" "BackgroundCompilation"="0"
“Delphi” “Background Compilation” – Google Search shows much more information, based on what it returned I found that the first actual documentation was for Background Compilation in Delphi 2010, some 10 years after it became available:
The image in the blog post of former product manager Andreano Lanusse shows why I did not see the behaviour: when background compiling is active, the progress dialog is transparent (and non-modal). I did not have the compiler progress enabled, so never saw that dialog change behaviour.
–jeroen
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Posted by jpluimers on 2021/03/23
I think using AfterConstruction is a poor man’s solution that you should only use in exceptional cases, as it is:
constructor in the chain is called.constructor chain (i.e. exceptions in it will not automatically call the destructor chain, nor BeforeDestruction)There were quite a few customer sites I visited that were using AfterConstruction. Usage roughly falls into two cases:
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Posted by jpluimers on 2021/03/16
A while ago, I had to trace through a lot of code in the CPU pane to track down some memory allocation related issues.
I wondered what the use of the FS segment was about, so via [Archive.is] delphi what is fs segment used for – Google Search, I found that it is related to Win32 Structured Exception handling and therefore not limited to Delphi, through these links:
A few disassembly parts to show how the Delphi Win32 compiler uses this for try finally blocks and try except blocks is below. Note that often, there are implicit try finally blocks when having managed method parameters or local variables.
–jeroen
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Posted by jpluimers on 2021/03/04
When using RTTI in Delphi, you really want the RTTI to be available.
The compiler includes RTTI for classes, as soon as it found that a class is touched by code that will be executed.
So in order to include RTTI for classes into the executable, you have to ensure you touch the class.
Basically there are two tricks for that.
class function TObject.ClassName: string; begin Result := UTF8ToString(_PShortStr(PPointer(PByte(Self) + vmtClassName)^)^); end;
procedure EnsureRttiIsAvailable(const Classes: array of TClass); begin end;EnsureRttiIsAvailable([TMyClass, TMyOtherClass]);
I like the second solution more, as it clearly states the intent.
The first trick is calling a function without using the result. This is a Pascal construct that looks odd, but is perfectly valid to use: basically you discard the result.
–jeroen
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The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 