Generics + System.Move = Kaboom!

It’s probably not a news anymore that the Move method (in System unit) should not be used to move chunks of memory that contain references to managed type (like String, Interface of dynamic arrays). By moving only the reference to another memory block you’re not incrementing the reference count of that object which results in a big Kaboom later on.

A simple example of this would be:

type
  { Declare a data type which uses a ref counted
     object - String }
  TMyData = record
    FStr: String;
  end;

var
  A, B, C: TMyData;
begin
  { Initialize the initial string }
  A.FStr := 'Hello World!';

  { Move A to B (no compiler magic involved) }
  Move(A, B, SizeOf(A));

  { Move A to C (with compiler magic involved) }
  C := A;

  { Change the string stored in A and in C }
  A.FStr[1] := '_';
  C.FStr[1] := '+';

  WriteLn('A = ', A.FStr);
  WriteLn('B = ', B.FStr);
  WriteLn('C = ', C.FStr);

  ReadLn;
end.

The result is not surprising: A = _ello World!, B = +ello World! C = +ello World. While A and B have correct values, C certainly doesn’t. This happens for obvious reasons - C would either have a reference to B’s or A’s string, while not holding a reference count to them.

So what does this have to do with generics? Simple, while implementing generic collections you might be tempted to use the Move function to copy data from an internal array to some external one (an example would be ToArray() method of a generic list class). This is a good idea indeed, but only if your generic type is not a managed type! Moving an array of integer to another array of integers is safe, while moving an array of strings is not. This also means that you would have to use the most generic moving possible: copy element by element which would slow down the collection if the type is integer for example.

Below is a class designed to be as fast as possible depending on the actual type of a generic class:

type
  { Our mover class }
  TArrayMover<T> = class sealed
  private
   FIsManagedType: Boolean;

  public
    constructor Create();
    procedure Move(var Source, Dest: array of T;
      const SourceIndex, DestIndex, Count: Cardinal);
  end;

{ TMover<T> }
constructor TArrayMover<T>.Create;
const
  { Declare unsafe types which need
    element-by-element copy }
  UnsafeTypes = [tkLString, tkWString, tkUString,
    tkVariant, tkArray, tkInterface, tkRecord, tkDynArray];
var
  PInfo: PTypeInfo;
  I: Cardinal;
begin
  { Find out the type of the element }
  PInfo := PTypeInfo(TypeInfo(T));

  if (PInfo <> nil) and
    (PInfo^.Kind in UnsafeTypes) then
    FIsManagedType := true
  else
    FIsManagedType := false;
end;

procedure TArrayMover<T>.Move(var Source, Dest: array of T;
  const SourceIndex, DestIndex, Count: Cardinal);
var
  I: Cardinal;
begin
  { No range checking! }

  if FIsManagedType then
  begin
    for I := 0 to Count - 1 do
      Dest[I + DestIndex] := Source[I + SourceIndex];
  end else
    System.Move(Source[SourceIndex], Dest[DestIndex],
      Count * SizeOf(T));
end;

To use it, you first create an instance of TArrayMover. In it’s constructor it will decide if the data being operated on is unsafe to be copied directly. The Move method will then used that decision to select the appropriate copy method.