File size calculation, Int64, and differences between 32bit and 64bit - delphi

I had problems with the following code:
var
FileSize : Int64;
...
FileSize := Info.nFileSizeLow or (Info.nFileSizeHigh shl 32);
I expected it to work because of the Int64 type of the left side of the assignment. But it does not. The partial calculation containing the shl seems to produce an overflow.
So I changed it to:
FileSize := Info.nFileSizeLow or (Int64 (Info.nFileSizeHigh) shl 32);
which works on my 32 bit operating system, but does not work on Vista 64 bit!
Finally,
FileSize := Info.nFileSizeHigh;
FileSize := FileSize shl 32;
FileSize := Info.nFileSizeLow or FileSize;
works on both systems.
Can someone explain the differences in these three versions?

Generally speaking, the type of the expression a * b, where a and b are of type Integer and * is an operator that applies to Integer, is an integer type with the same range as Integer. (I say generally, as an exception is /.) In order for an operator to use 64-bit operations, one or more of the operands must have a range that is only expressible with a 64-bit type. That should cause all the operands to be promoted to 64-bit, and a 64-bit operation performed.
The fact that the left hand side of an assignment is a 64-bit location generally has no effect on the interpretation and typing of the expression on the right hand side of the assignment operator. This is the way it is in almost all languages that I'm aware of that have statically dispatched 32-bit and 64-bit operator overloads (as opposed to polymorphically dispatched operators on arbitrary precision integers or numeric towers etc.); making things behave otherwise would be very surprising behaviour.
For example, arguments to procedure calls are effectively implicit assignments to the parameters. If the left hand side of an assignment could change the interpretation of the expression on the right, we would not know how to interpret the argument to a procedure call without already knowing the definition:
var a, b: Integer;
// ...
P((a shl 16) or b); // 32-bit operation or 64-bit operation?
I do not know why you are seeing different behaviour with your second and third versions of the code. As far as I can see, they should be interpreted the same, and in my tests, they are interpreted the same. If you could provide sample code that works on 32-bit Windows but fails on 64-bit Windows, I could investigate further.

Actually, this is pretty well documented in Delphi 7's help file, under "Integer types":
In general, arithmetic operations on integers return a value of type Integer--which, in its current implementation, is equivalent to the 32-bit Longint. Operations return a value of type Int64 only when performed on one or more Int64 operand. Hence the following code produces incorrect results.
The code example provided:
var
I: Integer;
J: Int64;
...
I := High(Integer);
J := I + 1;
To get an Int64 return value in this situation, cast I as Int64:
...
J := Int64(I) + 1;

First of all FileSize must be defined as UInt64 and not Int64...
UInt64 (not available in early Delphi versions) is an unsigned 64 bit integer, aka a QWORD. This is the expected type for the FileSize (you won't expect a negative file size, won't you?).
IMHO you could have coded - using UInt64 because we don't want to have some values reported as negative:
FileSize := UInt64(Info.nFileSizeLow) or (UInt64(Info.nFileSizeHigh) shl 32));
But under Delphi 7 it produces the same exact code as yours.
FileSize := Info.nFileSizeLow or (Int64(Info.nFileSizeHigh) shl 32));
So there is perhaps some compiler regression. Could you take a look at the asm generated code (step debugger then Alt+F2), and see if there is a difference. But it's unlikely...
In all cases, here is a better (and faster) code:
with Int64Rec(FileSize) do
begin
Lo := Info.nFileSizeLow;
Hi := Info.nFileSizeHigh;
end;
The official MSDN documentation states about the WIN32_FIND_DATA Structure:
nFileSizeHigh: The high-order DWORD value of the file size, in bytes.
This value is zero unless the file size is greater than MAXDWORD.
The size of the file is equal to
(nFileSizeHigh * (MAXDWORD+1)) +
nFileSizeLow.
nFileSizeLow: The low-order DWORD value of the file size, in bytes.
Here is the resulting code:
FileSize := UInt64(Info.nFileSizeLow)+(UInt64(Info.nFileSizeHigh)*UInt64(1 shl 32));
Quite a funny definition, indeed...

This is not really an answer, but it's too long for a comment.
I noticed Delphi gets confused when the result of an expression is to be written into a 64 bit variable, but the operands are 32 bit. I ran into this bug when I was implementing a hash function returning an 64 bit number. Your third variant works because you're first assigning the 64 bit variable, helping Delphi figure out it really needs to do 64 bit arithmetic.
I'm tempted to say both variants (1) and (2) are actually failing because Delphi generates 32 bit arithmetic and then assignes the result to the 64 bit variable. I'm tempted to say the variant that works well on your 32 bit machine benefits from some sort of "unlucky non-failure" (ie: the code is bad, but none the less it produces good results for the given test). The trouble is, COMPILED code doesn't change when moved from a 32bit machine to a 64 bit machine. If the code is the same, the input is the same, you'd have to pin the error on the CPU, but you know you didn't find an bug in your CPU, so you have to fall back and re-think your tests, or pin it on the "unluck non-failure".

test on Delphi 7 and version 2 is OK. Must be bug of later version

Related

StrToFloat fails to report invalid floating point numbers in Delphi 64bits

The following code which attempts to convert a value well beyond the double precision range
StrToFloat('1e99999999')
correctly reports an incorrect floating point value in Delphi 10.2r3 with the Windows 32 bits compiler, but when compiled with the Window 64 bits compiler, it silently returns a 0 (zero).
Is there a way to have StrToFloat report an error when the floating point value is incorrect?
I have tried TArithmeticException.exOverflow, but this has no effect in that case.
I also tried TArithmeticException.exPrecision but it triggers in many usual approximation cases (f.i. it triggers when converting '1e9').
Issue was noticed with Delphi 10.2 update 3
addendum: to workaround the issue, I have started a clean-room alternative implementation of string to double conversion, initial version with tests can be found in dwscript commit 2ba1d4a
This is a defect that is present in all versions of Delphi that use the PUREPASCAL version of StrToFloat. That maps through to InternalTextToExtended which reads the exponent like this:
function ReadExponent: SmallInt;
var
LSign: SmallInt;
begin
LSign := ReadSign();
Result := 0;
while LCurrChar.IsDigit do
begin
Result := Result * 10;
Result := Result + Ord(LCurrChar) - Ord('0');
NextChar();
end;
if Result > CMaxExponent then
Result := CMaxExponent;
Result := Result * LSign;
end;
The problem is the location of
if Result > CMaxExponent then
This test is meant to be inside the loop, and in the asm x86 version of this code it is. As coded above, with the max exponent test outside the loop, the 16 bit signed integer result value is too small for your exponent of 99999999. As the exponent is read, the value in Result overflows, and becomes negative. So for your example it turns out that an exponent of -7937 is used rather than 99999999. Naturally this leads to a value of zero.
This is a clear bug and I have submitted a bug report: RSP-20333.
As for how to get around the problem, I'm not aware of another function in the Delphi RTL that performs this task. So I think you will need to do one of the following:
Roll your own StrToFloat.
Pre-process the string, and handle out of range exponents before they read StrToFloat.
Use one of the functions from the C runtime library that performs the same task.
Finally, I am grateful for you asking this question because I can see that my own program is affected by this defect and so I can now fix it!
Update:
You may also be interested to look at a related bug that I found when investigating: RSP-20334. It might surprise you to realise that, StrToFloat('߀'), when using the PUREPASCAL version of StrToFloat, returns 1936.0. The trick is that the character that is being passed to StrToFloat is a non-Latin digit, in this case U+07C0.

Delphi: add constant to TFileTime

I am new in Delphi and I need in my project add some constant to TFileTime which is record of lower and upper part of 64bit value. How to do this in Delphi? I have found only code in C++, but i dont know how make in Delphi unsigned int64 (ULONGLONG) and also I dont know how to cast this to longword (DWORD):
ULONGLONG qwResult;
// Copy the time into a quadword.
qwResult = (((ULONGLONG) ft.dwHighDateTime) << 32) + ft.dwLowDateTime;
// Add constant
qwResult += constant;
// Copy the result back into the FILETIME structure.
ft.dwLowDateTime = (DWORD) (qwResult & 0xFFFFFFFF );
ft.dwHighDateTime = (DWORD) (qwResult >> 32 );
Thanks
The FILETIME struct is defined as:
typedef struct _FILETIME {
DWORD dwLowDateTime;
DWORD dwHighDateTime;
} FILETIME, *PFILETIME;
So, because Windows runs on little Endian, the layout of this struct is compatible with a 64 bit integer value.
So, you can cast TFileTime to UInt64, do the arithmetic, and cast back. Like this:
function IncrementedFileTime(const Value: TFileTime; const Incr: UInt64): TFileTime;
begin
Result := TFileTime(UInt64(Value) + Incr);
end;
Now, the documentation for the FILETIME record says:
It is not recommended that you add and subtract values from the
FILETIME structure to obtain relative times. Instead, you should copy
the low- and high-order parts of the file time to a ULARGE_INTEGER
structure, perform 64-bit arithmetic on the QuadPart member, and copy
the LowPart and HighPart members into the FILETIME structure.
Do not cast a pointer to a FILETIME structure to either a
ULARGE_INTEGER* or __int64* value because it can cause alignment
faults on 64-bit Windows.
This is an issue on targets where alignment errors result in hard faults. For instance Itanium. However, on x86 and x64 the code in my answer is fine because those architectures do not issue hard faults for alignment errors. Which is just as well because the Delphi compiler isn't very good at alignment.

Why does FloatToText return different values in different projects?

I'm using FloatToText this way:
function ExFloatToStr(Value: Extended): string;
var
Buffer: array[0..63] of Char;
FormatSettings: TFormatSettings;
begin
GetLocaleFormatSettings(GetUserDefaultLCID, FormatSettings);
SetString(Result, Buffer, FloatToText(Buffer, Value, fvExtended, ffGeneral,
18, 0, FormatSettings));
end;
If I pass to this function value 9229.99, it returns a string value 9229.9900000000016, but it's not what I want.
When I create a new project and just copy the above code there, it works well. It returns 9229.99.
What might be the reason they work different in different projects ?
This is in fact an issue of representability. Here's the SSCCE:
{$APPTYPE CONSOLE}
uses
SysUtils, Windows;
function ExFloatToStr(Value: Extended): string;
var
Buffer: array[0..63] of Char;
FormatSettings: TFormatSettings;
begin
GetLocaleFormatSettings(GetUserDefaultLCID, FormatSettings);
SetString(Result, Buffer, FloatToText(Buffer, Value, fvExtended, ffGeneral,
18, 0, FormatSettings));
end;
var
X: Double;
Y: Extended;
begin
X := 9229.99;
Y := 9229.99;
Writeln(ExFloatToStr(X));
Writeln(ExFloatToStr(Y));
Readln;
end.
Output
9229.98999999999978
9229.99
You ask for 18 digits. When you store the value as a double precision, the value stored becomes imprecise to 18 decimal digit precision. A double precision value has 15-16 significant decimal digits of precision. And that is fewer than 18. When you store the value as an extended value, there is more precision available, sufficient to store your value accurately to the 18 decimal digits of precision that your requested.
I always refer to Rob Kennedy's excellent page on this matter: http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~rkennedy/exact-float?number=9229.99
This tells us that your value, when converted to extended and double is represented as:
9229.99 = + 9229.99000 00000 00000 21316 28207 28030 05576 13372 80273 4375
9229.99 = + 9229.98999 99999 99781 72127 15744 97222 90039 0625
And this tallies precisely with the output above.
So, I expect that you will find that in your existing project you will, at some point, be storing the value to a double precision variable. And at that point you lose the extra precision of Extended.
For what it is worth, I regard the 80 bit extended type as an anachronism. It is only supported on Intel chips, and only used by 32 bit compilers. In my experience it nevers offers any real benefit over double precision. And its performance is poor because of memory alignment. As the author of a lot of floating point code, I never use extended.
There is a difference when compiling for x86 vs x64 Windows targets.
For x86 platform the 'Extended' type has a different 'size' then on the x64 platform.
See the Delphi help (XE2):
System.Extended offers greater precision than other real types, but is less
portable. Be careful using System.Extended if you are creating data files to
share across platforms.
On Win32 systems, the size of System.Extended is 10 bytes.
On Win64 systems, however, the System.Extended type is an alias for System.Double,
which is only 8 bytes. This difference can adversely affect numeric precision in
floating-point operations. For more information, see Delphi Considerations for
Cross-Platform Applications.
Writeln(IntToStr(SizeOf(Extended))); // displays 10 on Win32 and 8 on Win64
Essentially this means on x64 platforms, you have less significant floating point values, which might result in a different conversion to a textual value.

Issue with in operator in Delphi 64 bits project

I'm porting a Delphi project to 64 bits and I have a problem with a line of code which has the IN operator.
The compiler raise this error
E2010 Incompatible types: 'Integer' and 'Int64'
I wrote this sample app to replicate the problem.
{$APPTYPE CONSOLE}
{$R *.res}
uses
System.SysUtils;
Var
I : Integer;
L : Array of string;
begin
try
if I in [0, High(L)] then
except
on E: Exception do
Writeln(E.ClassName, ': ', E.Message);
end;
readln;
end.
This code works ok in 32 bits, but why doesn't it compile in Delphi XE2 64 bits? How I can fix this issue?
*UPDATE *
It seems which my post caused a lot of confusion (sorry for that) , just for explain the original code which i'm porting is more complex, and I just wrote this code as a sample to illustrate the issue. the original code uses an in operator to check if a value (minor than 255) belongs to a group of values (all minor or equal to 255) like so
i in [0,1,3,50,60,70,80,127,High(LArray)]
This code can't be compiled because the High function is returning a 8 byte value, which is not a ordinal value. and the In operator can be only used in sets with ordinal values.
FYI, the size of the results returned by the High function is different depending of the parameter passed as argument.
Check this sample
Writeln(SizeOf(High(Byte)));
Writeln(SizeOf(High(Char)));
Writeln(SizeOf(High(Word)));
Writeln(SizeOf(High(Integer)));
Writeln(SizeOf(High(NativeInt)));
Writeln(SizeOf(High(TBytes)));
Finally, you can fix your code casting the result of High function to integer.
if I in [0, Integer(High(L))] then
UPDATE
Check the additional info provided by David and remember to be very careful when you use the in operator to check the membership of a value in set with variable values. The in operator only checks the least significant byte of each element (in delphi 32 bits).
Check this sample
i:=257;
Writeln( 1 in [i]);
This return true because the low byte of 257 is 1.
And in Delphi 64 bits, the values greater than 255 are removed of the set. So this code
i:=257;
Writeln( 1 in [i]);
will return false because is equivalent to
Writeln( 1 in []);
What RRUZ says is quite correct.
To add a little bit more explanation, in 64 bit Delphi, dynamic array indices can be 64 bits wide. This is clearly needed, for example, when working with a large TBytes memory block. And so the high function must return a value of a type wide enough to hold all possible indices. So, high when applied to a dynamic array, returns a value of type Int64.
Once you start compiling 64 bit code the in operator is unsuited to the problem you are trying to solve. Whilst you could use the cast that RRUZ suggests, it may be clearer to write the code like this
if (I=low(L)) or (I=high(L)) then
Whilst the in operator makes for quite readable code, it is my opinion that a cast to Integer is not acceptable here. That will simply set a trap for you to fall into when you first have an array with more than high(Integer) elements. When that happens the code with the cast will stop working.
But in fact the problems run far deeper than this. The in version of the code fails long before you reach high(Integer) elements. It turns out that your code, whilst it compiles, does not really work. For example, consider this program:
program WeirdSets;
{$APPTYPE CONSOLE}
uses
SysUtils;
var
a: array of Integer;
begin
SetLength(a, 257);
Writeln(BoolToStr(Length(a) in [0, Length(a)], True));
end.
You would expect this program to output True but in fact it outputs False. If instead you were to write
Writeln(BoolToStr(Length(a) in [0, 257], True));
then the compiler reports:
[DCC Error] WeirdSets.dpr(9): E1012 Constant expression violates subrange bounds
The fundamental issue here is that sets are limited to 256 elements so as soon as you have an array with length greater than that, your code stops working.
Sadly, Delphi's support for sets is simply inadequate and is in urgent need of attention.
I also wonder whether you actually meant to write
if I in [0..High(L)] then
If so then I would recommend that you use the InRange function from Math.
if InRange(I, 0, High(L)) then
or even better
if InRange(I, low(L), High(L)) then
The most serious problem with the OP code is that in operator is limited to set size, i.e. [0..255]. Try this in any 32 bit version of Delphi to avoid the 64 bit issue:
var
I: Integer;
L: array of Integer;
begin
SetLength(L, 1000);
I:= 999;
Assert(I in [0, High(L)]); // fails !
end;
The OP is lucky if Length(L) <= 256 always, otherwise it is a bug you probably never thought of.
To find this bug switch range checking on:
{$R+}
procedure TForm1.Button2Click(Sender: TObject);
var
I: Integer;
A: array of Integer;
begin
SetLength(A, 1000);
I:= 999;
if I in [0, High(A)] then ShowMessage('OK!'); // Project .. raised exception
// class ERangeError with message 'Range check error'.
end;

How to define an unsigned 64-bit integer in Delphi7?

In Delphi 7, int64s are signed, if I try to declare a hex constant larger than $8000000000000000 (eg, what is really an uint64) I get an error. Can you advise some workarounds, please?
You can make a variant record like so
type muint64 = record
case boolean of
true: (i64 : int64);
false:(lo32, hi32: cardinal);
end;
Now you can just use the cardinals to fill your uint64 with unsigned data.
The other option would be to use code like this:
const almostmaxint64 = $800000045000000;
var muint64: int64;
begin
muint64:= almostmaxint64;
muint64:= muint64 shl 1;
end
Without support from the compiler you don't have many options.
I'm presuming that you wish to pass a value to a function in some external DLL. You'll have to declare the parameter as a signed 64 bit integer, Int64. Then all you can do is pass in the signed value that has the same bit pattern as the desired unsigned value. Build yourself a little converter tool with a compiler that has support for unsigned 64 bit integers.
Traditionally, Broland implementations suffered interoperability issues because lack of largest unsigned supported by target platform. I remember using LongInt values instead of DWORD and waiting for troubles since very early days of Turbo Pascal for Windows. Then was Cardinal happiness, but no, D4 introduced largest integer Int64 in its signed form only. Again.
So your only option is to rely on signed fundamental type Int64 and pray... wait, no, just use Int64Rec typecast to perform arithmetics on least and most significant part separately.
Back to constant declaration:
const
foo = $8000004200000001; // this will work because hexadecimal notation is unsigned by its nature
// however, declared symbol foo becomes signed Int64 value
// attempting to use decimal numeral will result in "Integer constant too large" error
// see "True constants" topic in D7 Help for more details
procedure TForm1.FormCreate(Sender: TObject);
begin
// just to verify
Caption := IntToHex(foo, SizeOf(Int64) * 2);
end;
Unfortunately, the other workaround is to change your compiler. Free Pascal always keeps signed and unsigned types in sync.
This snippet compiles and yields correct result in Borland Delphi Version 15.0 (a.k.a Delphi 7).

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