- Chapter 3: Basic Pascal Syntax
- Integer Types and Floating-Point Types
- Pascal Strings
- Typecasts
- Arrays
- Records
- Pointers
- What You Won't Find in Object Pascal
- Summary
What You Won't Find in Object Pascal
I want to close with a few words on what you won't find in Object Pascal:
There is no support for multiple inheritance. However, you can descend from multiple interfaces, just as you can in Java.
There is no support for operator overloading. This feature was deemed inappropriate for the language by its developers. They felt that it would make the syntax of the language too complex and possibly could lead to much longer compile times, similar to those found in C++. However, you will find that a clever use of variants will enable you to do something very similar to operating overloading.
No garbage collection takes place. This is a feature that the team has often contemplated adding to the language. However, you can use numerous tricks to help you clean up memory automatically in Pascal; many of these were discussed in the section on pointers found earlier in this chapter.