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7.10 Strings in BP and GPC

Strings are “Schema types” in GNU Pascal which is something more advanced than Borland-style strings. For variables, you cannot specify just String as a type like in Borland Pascal; for parameters and pointer types you can. There is no 255 characters length limit. According to Extended Pascal, the maximum string length must be in (parentheses); GNU Pascal accepts [brackets], too, however, like BP.

For more about strings and schema types see Schema Types.

GPC supports Borland Pascal's string handling functions and some more (see String Operations):

Borland Pascal GNU Pascal
Length Length
Pos Pos, Index (1)
Str Str, WriteStr (1) (2)
Val Val, ReadStr (2)
Copy Copy, SubStr, MyStr[2 .. 7] (3)
Insert Insert
Delete Delete
MyStr[0] := #7 SetLength (MyStr, 7)
=, <>, <, <=, >, >= =, <>, <, <=, >, >= (4)
EQ, NE, LT, LE, GT, GE
n/a Trim

Notes:

(1) The order of parameters of the Extended Pascal routines (Index, WriteStr) is different from the Borland Pascal routines.

(2) ReadStr and WriteStr allow an arbitrary number of arguments, and the arguments are not limited to numbers. WriteStr also allows comfortable formatting like WriteLn does, e.g. WriteStr (Dest, Foo : 20, Bar, 1/3 : 10 : 2).

(3) SubStr reports a runtime error if the requested substring does not fit in the given string, Copy does not (like in BP).

(4) By default, the string operators behave like in BP. However, if you use the option --no-exact-compare-strings or --extended-pascal, they ignore differences of trailing blanks, so, e.g., 'foo' and 'foo ' are considered equal. The corresponding functions (EQ, ...) always do exact comparisons.