[solved] TIniFile takes first value for repeated key
lazarus / 64-FPC development

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kegge13 · 2020-06-04 07:46

When a key in a ini file has more than one version, Delhi would take
the last value. FPC 3.0.4 takes the first value. Not a big deal, I
tend to have multiple versions of a key for quick testing, but was
this a deliberate design change?

In IniFiles ReadString uses KeyByName to find a key:
Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]window.onload = function(){var x1 =
document.getElementById("main_content_section"); if (x1) { var x =
document.getElementsByClassName("geshi");for (var i = 0; i       for i
:= 0 to Count-1 do        if CompareText(Items[i].Ident, AName) = 0
then begin          Result := Items[i];          Break; 
Btw: imho using a break in a for-loop is a sloppy programming
practice. Is that because of my old-skool background?

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PascalDragon · 2020-06-04 08:08

Quote from: kegge13 on June 04, 2020, 09:46:38 amBtw: imho using a
break in a for-loop is a sloppy programming practice. Is that because
of my old-skool background?

Yes. Using Break is perfectly legitimate and more often than not it's
better to abort a loop early (e.g. if you search for a value in a
large dataset why walk the whole list when you can abort early?).

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howardpc · 2020-06-04 08:31

Quote from: kegge13 on June 04, 2020, 09:46:38 amWhen a key in a ini
file has more than one version, Delhi would take the last value. FPC
3.0.4 takes the first value. Not a big deal, I tend to have multiple
versions of a key for quick testing, but was this a deliberate design
change?
FPC has deliberately been implemented without reference to Delphi
code.To provide - as far as possible - compatibility with Delphi, its
published APIs and documentation are of course consulted, but not the
sources, which are copyright.
So a clean-room approach is taken, and FPC sources are not derived
from Delphi except for (largely) compatible naming/API and
functionality.
Implementation specifics are consequently bound to differ from Delphi
(if you have the Delphi sources and compare them, which many FPC users
don't).

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kegge13 · 2020-06-04 08:46

Quote from: PascalDragon on June 04, 2020, 10:08:47 amYes. Using Break
is perfectly legitimate and more often than not it's better to abort a
loop early (e.g. if you search for a value in a large dataset why walk
the whole list when you can abort early?).
Therefore I would have used a while loop. But I see your point, which
I always was aware of, it takes one test extra each loop:
Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]window.onload = function(){var x1 =
document.getElementById("main_content_section"); if (x1) { var x =
document.getElementsByClassName("geshi");for (var i = 0; i while
(i<Count) and (Length(Result)=0) do

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Bart · 2020-06-04 15:59

Quote from: kegge13 on June 04, 2020, 09:46:38 amWhen a key in a ini
file has more than one version, Delhi would take the last value. FPC
3.0.4 takes the first value. Not a big deal, I tend to have multiple
versions of a key for quick testing, but was this a deliberate design
change?

I'm not sure what you mean, but given a inifile like:
Code: [Select][multiples]
key=first
key=middle
key=last

then both Fpc and Delphi 7 return 'first' on
Ini.ReadString('multiples','key','ERROR_KEY_NOT_FOUND')

Bart

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kegge13 · 2020-06-12 14:11

Quote from: Bart on June 04, 2020, 05:59:12 pm
I'm not sure what you mean, but given a inifile like:
Code: [Select][multiples]
key=first
key=middle
key=last

then both Fpc and Delphi 7 return 'first' on
Ini.ReadString('multiples','key','ERROR_KEY_NOT_FOUND')


I checked (again) today with D7. With
Code: [Select]SpecialMode[1]String[1]=selftest02_real.txt
SpecialMode[1]String[1]=selftest03_pdd.txt

my application (now ported to LCL) in D7 takes the second file. But as
said, not a big deal at all. It was just convenient for me, not having
to comment out the first line.

Thanks anyway for your comments.

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Bart · 2020-06-12 17:16

Since the documentation TIniFile does not specify what the behaviour
should be on a basically invalid section, the behaviour as such is by
definition undefined (and can change at any time due to implementation
details that are not part of the public API).

Bart