Working with Delphi 2009

My main work is with Delphi 2006, but more and more of our source code now compiles with Delphi 2009, and I also created some tools with Delphi 2009.

Converting existing source code is extremely simple, as long as the source code is written nicely, and is about databases, user interfaces etc. However, direct Windows API calls need to be checked - especially where you have an "array of char" and pass the sizeof(array) as parameter and similar constructs... the char is now widechar and sizeof(array) is no longer the character count. Often, you will find this kind of code in 3rd party components or small code snippets that you get from other people. Sometimes you can fix things by replacing char with ansichar, sometimes you want to use the Unicode API and therefore need to replace sizeof(array) with length(array).

CodeGear has done a lot of make simple I/O simple. Many things just work, but some things don't. TStream.Write (str[1],length(str)) will fail, because the second parameter is the byte count. Rewrite to TStream.Write (str[1], sizeof(char)*length(str)) or make str an ansistring. In other words, you will need to fix Windows API calls and advanced I/O.

If you have previously created an application, that handled unicode, you may have stored utf-8 encoded stuff in TStrings objects, and used various character sets in various parts of your program. You can still do that, but some functions now only work with string and not ansistring, and the easiest solution is often to make everything use unicode, and convert to/from unicode at I/O and APIs. When fixing all this, it feels really good - it's like cleaning up your desk and the source code gets simpler.

You may think: I can just replace all "string" with "ansistring". No, you cannot. Many functions like copy(), insert() etc. will no longer work with ansistring. Delphi will convert your ansistring to string first, assumping that your ansistring contains text in the local character set, and that assumption is not always correct.

Also, there is one special character that has stopped working in string types: #0

If you assign s:='Hello'#0'World', then s will contain 'Hello'. The reason is, that string is now strictly for text purposes, and #0 is not text - it's a binary code. This was probably the most tricky problem that I have encountered, because I had to convert some code that did this. Fortunately, it only took about 5 minutes to fix. If you're searching for a replacement code, consider #12 (Form feed). I don't think anybody uses that code today, and it gets converted nicely between character sets. However note, that TCharacter.IsWhitespace() will treat it as whitespace, and that #12 is not the end of a PChar string, in case you're doing complicated byte gymnastics.

It's not plug & play to use old source code in Delphi 2009, but conversion is fairly easy, and normally you will not need to be familiar with source code in order to convert it easily. This is good, because it means that you can easily take another person's source code, and convert it.

When writing new apps in Delphi 2009, it feels really, really good. The quick startup feels good, texts and raw binary data is automatically separated into different datatypes, and mixing these up unintentionally gives nice warnings. It feels as if Delphi is helping you more now, than before. If you need advanced ways to save data, the new Generics features can make the source code much more readable than in previous versions. Simply derive from TList in the Generics.Collections unit:

type
  TPairTitleId=
    class
      ComboBoxTitle:string;
      DatabaseId:integer;
    end;
  TPairTitleIdList=Generics.Collections.TList<TPairTitleId>; 

Now you can refer to things like:

function dummy (list:TPairTitleIdList);
var
  i:integer;
begin
  i:=list.Items[3].DatabaseId;
end;

It is a significant productivity enhancement if used wisely. There is no need to use the familiar "TStrings.Objects[i] as TMyClass" any more.

Delphi 2009 is a significant step forward. It does everything your old Delphi does, but significantly better and easier.