Pascal · Expert

Lesson 1 · On the house

Class references and virtual constructors

Metaclasses (class of), virtual constructors, and building objects from a registry by name.

Lesson 2

RTTI with TypInfo

Read and write published properties by name, list them, and convert enums to strings.

Lesson 3

Threads

TThread subclasses, the cthreads unit on Unix, critical sections, and WaitFor.

Lesson 4

Raw memory

GetMem/FreeMem, pointer arithmetic, Move, FillChar, CompareByte, and alignment.

Lesson 5

Managed types and copy-on-write

How AnsiString and dynamic arrays are reference counted, when copies happen, and UniqueString.

Lesson 6

Generic routines and constraints

Generic functions, generic classes with constraints, and specialization in objfpc mode.

Lesson 7

Calling C libraries

Declare external functions with cdecl, use ctypes, link libc and libm, and pass PChar buffers.

Lesson 8

Conditional compilation

$DEFINE, $IFDEF, $IF expressions, platform symbols, include files, and compile-time info.

Lesson 9

Range and overflow checks

Turn on {$R+} and {$Q+}, catch ERangeError and EIntOverflow, and scope checks locally.

Lesson 10

Bit manipulation and packed layouts

shl/shr, and/or/xor masks, sets as bit fields, bitpacked records, and SizeOf.