Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ptx 1270 days ago
> It can be used in the style of simpler languages like Go and is almost as safe as Rust in a much faster manner.

What does this mean, exactly? Usage in the style of Go requires garbage collection and being safe like Rust (without GC) requires a borrow-checker, and as far as I know Free Pascal doesn't have either.
2 comments
planetis 1270 days ago
A borrow-checker isn't the most practical or the only way to provide safety. For example, a string type can have an offset for creating O(1) string slices and point to a shared counter. That way when mutating the string, it creates a fresh copy iff the counter is bigger than 0.

I am working towards this in https://github.com/planetis-m/cowstrings

link
shadowofneptune 1270 days ago
Object Pascal has two magic types, dynamic arrays and AnsiStrings. These are automatically reference counted. Objects and classes have to be managed by hand, yes.

In general, expect a lot more compiler magic out of Pascal, a lot of concepts were hacked into the Borland compilers over time.

link
usrnm 1270 days ago
So, it's closer to C++ wrt safety, not Go or Rust.
link
shadowofneptune 1270 days ago
That is accurate, yes. Borland C++ and Delphi share the same component library and are interoperable.
link