Delphi in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference

by Ray Lischner

Overview

With a new name and a new focus on CORBA, database drivers, and Microsoft Back Office applications, Inprise/Borland Delphi is enjoying a resurgence, with a growing user base of programmers who use Delphi for rapid development of enterprise computing applications. Not to rest on success, the latest version of Delphi, Version 5, includes further expansion and refinement of the 3-tier application framework introduced in Delphi 4 and has resulted in a prize-winning product.Delphi in a Nutshell is the first concise reference to Borland/Inprise Delphi available. It succinctly collects all the information you need in one easy-to-use, complete, and accurate volume that goes beyond the product documentation itself.Delphi in a Nutshell starts with the Delphi object model and how to use RTTI (Run Time Type Information) for efficient programming. The rest of the book is the most complete Delphi Pascal language reference available in print, detailing every language element with complete syntax, examples, and methods for use. The book concludes with a look at the compiler, discussing compiler directives in depth.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781449369521
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
Publication date:	03/16/2000
Series:	In a Nutshell (O'Reilly)
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	578
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Ray Lischner began his career as a software developer, but dropped out of the corporate rat race to become an author. He started using C++ in the late 1980s, working at a company that was rewriting its entire product line in C++. Over the years, he has witnessed the evolution of C++ from cfront to native compilers to integrated development environments to visual, component-based tools. Ray has taught C++ at Oregon State University. He is the author of Delphi in a Nutshell and O'Reilly's upcoming C++ in a Nutshell, as well as other books.

Table of Contents

	Preface	vii
Chapter 1	Delphi Pascal	1
	Units	1
	Programs	4
	Libraries	5
	Packages	7
	Data Types	8
	Variables and Constants	21
	Exception Handling	22
	File I/O	26
	Functions and Procedures	27
Chapter 2	The Delphi Object Model	30
	Classes and Objects	30
	Interfaces	53
	Reference Counting	58
	Messages	61
	Memory Management	62
	Old-Style Object Types	69
Chapter 3	Runtime Type Information	71
	Virtual Method Table	71
	Published Declarations	73
	The TypInfo Unit	79
	Virtual and Dynamic Methods	86
	Initialization and Finalization	88
	Automated Methods	90
	Interfaces	91
	Exploring RTTI	91
Chapter 4	Concurrent Programming	95
	Threads and Processes	95
	The TThread Class	103
	The BeginThread and EndThread Functions	108
	Thread Local Storage	109
	Processes	109
	Futures	119
Chapter 5	Language Reference	127
Chapter 6	System Constants	422
	Variant Type Codes	422
	Open Array Types	423
	Virtual Method Table Offsets	424
	Runtime Error Codes	425
Chapter 7	Operators	428
	Unary Operators	428
	Multiplicative Operators	430
	Additive Operators	431
	Comparison Operators	432
Chapter 8	Compiler Directives	435
Appendix A	Command-Line Tools	473
Appendix B	The SysUtils Unit	488
	Index	543

Editorial Reviews

The opening chapters discuss the Delphi object model, runtime type information and concurrent programming, while the bulk of the book is a language reference with every keyword, directive, function, procedure, variable, class, method, and property that is part of Delphi Pascal. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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