Delphi Programming Tips & Tricks

Published with special permission from Embarcadero - this post writes about pre-release Delphi version where everything is subject to change until finally released. Nullables are a rather simple concept. All you need is a value, and some flag that will tell you whether or not the value has been explicitly set or not. type TNullable<T> = record private FHasValue: boolean; FValue: T; function GetValue: T; procedure SetValue(AValue: T); public property HasValue: boolean read FHasValue; property Value: T read GetValue write SetValue; end; function TNullable<T>.GetValue: T; begin if FHasValue then Result := FValue else raise Exception.Create('Invalid operation, Nullable type has no value'); end; procedure TNullable<T>.SetValue(AValue: T); begin FHasValue := True; FValue := AValue; end; Plain and simple. But then you have the fact that records are not automatically initialized and that your FHasValue bo

Let's say you have a nice, working Delphi application. One fine day, for no reason whatsoever, you decide to run your fine and bug free application with FastMM in full debug mode. Just for fun... and suddenly, out of the blue, the app starts crashing with an AV reading of address 0x80808088. What is going on... ???? When a seemingly working application suddenly starts misbehaving, the first instinct would be to look at the latest code change in searching for clues. In the above case, the only change was turning on FastMM debug mode. Could this be a bug in FastMM? While all software has bugs and it is perfectly possible that FastMM has bugs, too, it is highly unlikely that this is FastMM's fault. If turning on the CatchUseOfFreedInterfaces define in FastMM configuration shows an attempt to use an interface on a freed object, you have found the culprit. It may require further debugging and inspecting the code, but at least you will know what to look for. One of the "