I had my old MP3 Id3 tag reader recompiled under D2010 and it seems it won't find the tags anymore.
code is farily simple, but it doesn't work.
The debugger shows a lots of zero and then chineese signs in the results!
var dat:file of char;
id3:array [0..TAGLEN] of Char; //is 0..127 for ID3 v1
begin
vValid:=True;
if FileExists(vFilename) then begin
assignfile(dat,vFilename);
If (FileGetAttr(vFilename)>32) or (FileGetAttr(vFilename)=1) then
Filemode:= 0
Else
Filemode:= 2;
reset(dat);
seek(dat,FileSize(dat)-128);
blockread(dat,id3,128);
closefile(dat);
vMP3tag:=copy(id3, 0, 3);
if vMP3Tag='TAG' then begin
vTitle:=strip(copy(id3, 4, 30),' ');
vArtist:=strip(copy(id3, 34, 30), ' ');
I heard something about Unicode, and PansiChar, but I still don't understand much what these do anyway :)
thanks for looking
Try this:
var dat:file of AnsiChar;
id3:array [0..TAGLEN] of AnsiChar; //is 0..127 for ID3 v1
That is of course if your file is ansi-based instead of unicode based. I have no idea what might be in an id3 tag of an mp3 file.
If you want to understand the difference, this white paper explained it all to me. Basically Unicode uses more memory space to store a single character (like 4 times the amount of an ansi character), but they allow characters like ie Chinese and Japanese, which ansi doesn't provide. Just read the white paper, then it'll all be clear.
In short, Ansichar and Ansistring is what used to be a string in Delphi before D2009. In those days your application wouldn't be unicode compatible (you couldn't type chinese characters by default).
As from D2009, the definition of a string changed from an ansistring to a widestring and ansichar to widechar. That means your application will be unicode by default. But old code, expecting strings to be ansicode, need to be adapted to reflect that change.
Your code said char, meaning ansichar to pre-D2009 compilers, but widechar to D2009+ compilers. In other words, the new compilers read your code differently.
I hope that explains it a bit.
Oh!
it seems like AnsiCHar instead of Char is the way to go in D2010.
Ansi-char-them-all!
Related
I'm writing a delimiter for some Excel spreadsheet data and I need to read the rightward arrow symbol and pilcrow symbol in a large string.
The pilcrow symbol, for row ends, was fairly simply, using the Chr function and the AnsiChar code 182.
The rightward arrow has been more tricky to figure out. There isn't an AnsiChar code for it. The Unicode value for it is '2192'. I can't, however, figure out how to make this into a string or char type for me to use in my function.
Any easy ways to do this?
You can't use the 2192 character directly. But since a STRING variable can't contain this value either (as thus your TStringList can't either), that doesn't matter.
What character(s) are the 2192 character represented as in your StringList AFTER you have read it in? Probably by these three separate characters: 0xE2 0x86 0x92 (in UTF-8 format). The simple solution, therefore, is to start by replacing these three characters with a single, unique character that you can then assign to the Delimiter field of the TStringList.
Like this:
.
.
.
<Read file into a STRING variable, say S>
S := ReplaceStr(S,#$E2#$86#$92,'|');
SL := TStringList.Create;
SL.Text := S;
SL.Delimiter := '|';
.
.
.
You'll have to select a single-character representation of your 3-byte UTF-8 Unicode character that doesn't occur in your data elsewhere.
You need to represent that character as a UTF-16 character. In Unicode Delphi you would do it like this:
Chr(2192)
which is of type WideChar.
However, you are using Delphi 7 which is a pre-Unicode Delphi. So you have to do it like this:
var
wc: WideChar;
....
wc := WideChar(2192);
Now, this might all be to no avail for you since it sounds a little like your code is working with 8 bit ANSI text. In which case that character cannot be encoded in any 8 bit ANSI character set. If you really must use that character, you'll need to use Unicode text.
I have my own D6 pas library with crypto functions.
Today I tried to use it under XE3, and I found many bugs in it because of unicode.
I tried to port to AnsiString, but I failed on chr(nnn) which was 8 bit limited under Delphi6.
I'm trying to explain the problem:
Str := chr(hchar);
AStr := Str;
Str - string; AStr - ansistring.
When the hchar was 216 (diamater), then AStr changed to "O", what is Ascii 79...
And I lost the original value at this moment.
Is there any function for Ansi Chr? For example: "AChr(xxxx)"
Or I need to change my code to not use Strings in the inner section, only bytes and later convert these bytes to AnsiString?
Thanks for any suggestion, help, info!
dd
You can write AnsiChar(SomeOrdinalValue) to make an AnsiChar with a specific ordinal. So your code should be:
AStr := AnsiChar(hchar);
The problem with the code in the question is that you converted to UTF-16 and back.
It would seem to me that strings are the wrong type for your crypto code. Use a byte array, TBytes.
i having this problem, if i have:
mychr = ' ';
where the 'space' in mychr equival to #255 (typed manually ALT+255), and i write:
myord = ord (mychr)
to myord return value 160 and not 255. Of course, same problem is too with charater ALT+254 etc.
As i can solve this problem? I have tested on delphi xe in console mode.
Note: if i use:
mychar = #255;
then function ord() return value correctly.
I think the problem is that the Windows Alt+Num shortcuts insert characters according to the local codepage, whereas a modern Delphi use Unicode characters, and these differ (unless the value is less than or equal to 127, I think). The solution is to enter the values #255 explicitly in code. In addition, it is a very bad habit to include 'invisible' special characters in code, because you cannot tell what character it is without copying in to an external tool! In addition, you will have to trust the text encoding of the .pas file. It is much better to use constants like #255. Even better, do
const
MY_PRECIOUS_VALUE = #255;
and use this constant every time you need it.
Update
According to the English Wikipedia article on Alt code:
If the number typed has a leading 0
(zero), the character set used is the
Windows code page that matches the
current input locale. For most systems
using the Latin alphabet, this is
Windows-1252. For a complete list, see
code page. If the number does not have
a leading 0 (zero), DOS compatibility
is invoked. The character set used is
the DOS code page for the current
input locale. For systems using
English, this is code page 437. For
most other systems using the Latin
alphabet, this is code page 850. For a
complete list, see code page.
So, if you really, really want to continue entering Alt keycodes, you'd better type Alt and 0255 with the leading zero.
If you type ALT+255, DOS codepage is used; for 437 and 850 DOS codepages (one of which you probably use) #255 is NBSP (non-breaking space). In Unicode, NBSP is $A0 (160). That explains why you obtain Ord 160.
AFAIK console mode use the OEM Ansi char set. And under Delphi XE, you're not in the Ansi world, but in the UCS-2 / Unicode world.
var MyChar: char;
MyWideChar: WideChar;
MyAnsiChar: AnsiChar;
begin
MyChar := #255;
MyWideChar := #255;
MyAnsiChar := #255;
The first two variables are the same, i.e. a character with Unicode code 255 = $00FF, since in Delphi XE, char = WideChar. For the first Unicode Page, see this article.
But MyAnsiChar is what will be displayed on the console, after conversion from the current code page into the OEM console code page.
In the Unicode chart, this $00FF is a minuscule y with trema:
U+00FF ÿ Latin Small Letter Y with diaeresis
Under the console, you'll use the OEM char set, i.e. Code Page 347. So in your case $FF is NOT a character, but a special code
FF NBSP Non Breaking SPace
which is converted into U+00A0 when converted back to Unicode:
U+00A0 NBSP Non Breaking SPace
It is very likely that you are in a Windows-1252 code page, so normally the Delphi XE AnsiString will map #255 into a minuscule y with trema:
FF ÿ Latin Small Letter Y with diaeresis
You can use low-level e.g. CharToOemBuff windows functions to perform the conversion to or from OEM, or use an OEM AnsiString type:
type
TOemString = AnsiString(437);
In all cases, the console is not the best way of entering accentuated text under modern Windows, and Unicode Delphi XE.
Using InputQuery function e.g. should be safer, since it will return an Unicode string variable. ;)
We are upgrading our project from Delphi 2006 to Delphi 2010. Old code was:
InputText: string;
InputText := SomeTEditComponent.Text;
...
for i := 1 to length(InputText) do
if InputText[i] in ['0'..'9', 'a'..'z', 'Ř' { and more special characters } ] then ...
Trouble is with accent letters - compare will fail.
I tried switch source code from ANSI to UTF8 and LE UCS-2 but without luck. Only cast as AnsiChar works:
if CharInSet(AnsiChar(InputText[i]), ['0'..'9', 'a'..'z', 'Ř']) then
Funny is how Delphi works with that letters - try this in Evaluate during debugging:
Ord('Ř') = Ord('Ø')
(yes, Delphi says True, on Windows 7 Czech)
Question is: How can I store and compare simple strings without forcing them as AnsiStrings? Because if this is not working why we should use Unicode?
Thanks all for reply
Right now we are using in some parts simple CharInSet(AnsiChar(...
The declaration of CharInSet is
function CharInSet(C: AnsiChar; const CharSet: TSysCharSet): Boolean; overload; inline;
function CharInSet(C: WideChar; const CharSet: TSysCharSet): Boolean; overload; inline;
while TSysCharSet is
TSysCharSet = set of AnsiChar;
Thus CharInSet can only compare to a set of AnsiChar. That is why your accented character is converted to AnsiChar.
There is no equivalent to a set of WideChar as sets are limited to 256 elements. You have to implement some other means to check the character.
Something like
const
specials: string = 'Ř';
if CharInSet(InputText[i], ['0'..'9', 'a'..'z']) or (Pos(InputText[I], specials) > 0) then
might be a try. You can add more characters to specials as needed.
Don't rely on the encoding of your Delphi source code files.
It might be mangled when using any non-Unicode tool to work on your text files (or even buggy Unicode aware tools).
The best way is to specify your characters as a 4-digit Unicode code point.
const
MyEuroSign = #$20AC;
See also my blog posting about this.
As mentioned by Uwe Raabe, the problem with Unicode char is, they're pretty large. If Delphi allowed you to create an "set of Char" it would be 8 Kb in size! An "set of AnsiChar" is only 32 bytes in size, pretty manageable.
I'd like to offer some alternatives. First is a sort of drop-in replacement for the CharInSet function, one that uses an array of CHAR to do the tests. It's only merit is that it can be called immediately from almost anywhere, but it's benefits stop there. I'd avoid this if I can:
function UnicodeCharInSet(UniChr:Char; CharArray:array of Char):Boolean;
var i:Integer;
begin
for i:=0 to High(CharArray) do
if CharArray[i] = UniChr then
begin
Result := True;
Exit;
end;
Result := False;
end;
The trouble with this function is that it doesn't handle the x in ['a'..'z'] syntax and it's slow! The alternatives are faster, but aren't as close to a drop-in replacement as one might want. The first set of alternatives to be investigated are the string functions from Microsoft. Amongst them there's IsCharAlpha and IsCharAlphanumeric, they might fix lots of issues. The problem with those, all "alpha" chars are the same: You might end up with valid Alpha chars in non-enlgish non-czech languages. Alternatively you can use the TCharacter class from Embarcadero - the implementation is all in the Character.pas unit, and it looks effective, I have no idea how effective Microsoft's implementation is.
An other alternative is to write your own functions, using an "case" statement to get things to work. Here's an example:
function UnicodeCharIs(UniChr:Char):Boolean;
var i:Integer;
begin
case UniChr of
'ă': Result := True;
'ş': Result := False;
'Ă': Result := True;
'Ş': Result := False;
else Result := False;
end;
end;
I inspected the assembler generated for this function. While Delphi has to implement a series of "if" conditions for this, it does it very effectively, way better then implementing the series of IF statements from code. But it could use a lot of improvement.
For tests that are used ALOT you might want to look for some bit-mask based implementation.
You should either use IFs instead of IN or find a WideCharSet implementation. This might help if you have a lot of sets: http://code.google.com/p/delphilhlplib/source/browse/trunk/Library/src/Extensions/DeHL.WideCharSet.pas.
You have stumbled onto a case where an idiom from Pre-Unicode Pascal should not be translated directly into the most visually similar idiom in Unicode era pascal.
First, let's deal with unicode string literals. If you can always be sure you will never have any body ever use your source code with any tool that could mess up your encodings
then you could use Unicode literals. Personally, I would not like to see Unicode codepoints in string literals in any of my code, for various reasons, the strongest reason being that my code may need to be reviewed for internationalization at some point, and having literals that belong to your local language peppered through your code is even more of a problem when you use a language other than those which use the simple Ascii/Ansi codepage symbols. Your source code will be more readable if you keep in mind the assumption that your accented characters, and even non-accented character literals would be better declared, as Jeroen says to declare them, in the const section, away from your actual place in the code that you use them.
Consider the case where you use the same string literal thirty three times throughout your code. Why should it be repeated instead of a constant? And even when it is used only once, isn't the code more readable if you declare a sane constant name?
So, first you should declare constants like he shows.
Second, the CharInSet function is deprecated for all uses other than the use it was intended for which is where you must continue to use the "Set of AnsiChar" types. This is no longer a recommended approach in Delphi 2009/2010, and using arrays of literal unicode characters, in your constant section, would be more readable, and more up-to-date.
I suggest you use the JCL StrContainsChars function and avoid character sets, since
you can not declare an inline SET of Unicode Characters at all, the language does not allow it. Instead use this, and be sure to comment it:
implementation
uses
JclStrings;
const
myChar1 = #$2001;
myChar2 = #$2002;
myChar3 = #$2003;
myMatchList1 : Array[0..2] of Char = (myChar1,myChar2,myChar3);
function Match(s:String):Boolean;
begin
result := StrContainsChars( s, myMatchList1,false);
end;
String, and Character Literals are bad to have peppering your code, especially character or numeric literals, are called "Magic values" and are to be avoided.
P.S. Your debug assertion shows that Ord('?') is downcasting the unicode character quietly to an AnsiChar byte-size character in the debugger. This behaviour is unexpected and should probably logged in QC.
So the question is whether or not string literals (or const strings) in Delphi 2009/2010 can be directly cast as PAnsiChar's or do they need an additional cast to AnsiString first for this to work?
The background is that I am calling functions in a legacy DLL with a C interface that has some functions that require C-style char pointers. In the past (before Delphi 2009) code like the following worked like a charm (where the param to the C DLL function is a LPCSTR):
either:
LegacyFunction(PChar('Fred'));
or
const
FRED = 'Fred';
...
LegacyFunction(PChar(FRED));
So in changing to Delphi 2009 (and now in 2010), I changed the call to this:
LegacyFunction(PAnsiChar('Fred'));
or
const
FRED = 'Fred';
...
LegacyFunction(PAnsiChar(FRED));
This seems to work and I get the correct results from the function call. However there is some definite instability in the app that seems to be occurring mostly the second or third time through the code that calls the legacy functions (that was not present before the move to the 2009 version of the IDE). In investigating this, I realized that the native string literal (and const string) in Delphi 2009/2010 is a Unicode string so my cast was possibly in error. Examples here and elsewhere seem to indicate this call should look more like this:
LegacyFunction(PAnsiChar(AnsiString('Fred')))
What confuses me is that with the code above in the second examples, casting the string literal directly to a PAnsiChar does not generate any compiler warnings. If instead of a string literal, I was casting a string var, I would get a suspicious cast warning (and the string would be mangled). This (and the fact that the string is usable in the DLL) leads me to believe the compiler is doing some magic to correctly interpret the string literal as the intended string type. Is this what is happening or is the double cast (first to AnsiString, then to PAnsiChar) really necessary and the lack of it in my code the reason for the hard to track down instability? And does the same answer hold true for const strings as well?
For type-inferred constants (only initializable from literals) the compiler changes the actual text at compile-time, rather than at runtime. That means it knows whether or not the conversion loses data, so it doesn't need to warn you if it doesn't.
To 'visualize' Barry Kelly and Mason Wheeler words:
const
FRED = 'Fred';
var
p: PAnsiChar;
w: PWideChar;
begin
w := PWideChar(Fred);
p := PAnsiChar(Fred);
In ASM:
Unit7.pas.32: w := PWideChar(Fred);
00462146 BFA4214600 mov edi,$004621a4
// no conversion, just a pointer to constant/"-1 RefCounted" UnicodeString
Unit7.pas.33: p := PAnsiChar(Fred);
0046214B BEB0214600 mov esi,$004621b0
// no conversion, just a pointer to constant/"-1 RefCounted" AnsiString
As you can see in both cases PWideChar/PChar(FRED) and PAnsiChar(FRED), there is no conversion and Delphi compiler make 2 constant strings, one AnsiString and one UnicodeString.
Constants, including string literals, are untyped by default, and the compiler will fit them into whatever format works in the context you're using them in. As long as there are no non-ANSI characters in your string literal, the compiler won't have any trouble generating the string as ANSI instead of Unicode in this situation.
As Mason Wheeler points out all is fine as long as you don't have non-ANSI characters in your string const. If you have things like:
const FRED = 'Frédérick';
I'm pretty sure Delphi 2009/2010 will either issue charset hints (and apply a string conversion automatically - thus the hint) or fail at comparing ('Frédérick' is different in ISO-8859-1 than UTF-16).
If you can have "special" characters in your consts you will need to call string conversion.
Here are some basic examples with TStringList:
TStringList.SaveToFile(DestFilename, TEncoding.GetEncoding(28591)); //ISO-8859-1 (Latin1)
TStringList.SaveToFile(DestFilename, TEncoding.UTF8);