packed records' address again

Dear friends,

It turns out I have been too optimistic.

I had two thoughts:

1) I can unpack/repack the structures and work on them. FALSE! Here I have records, not arrays!

2) I cannot assign the array of chars in a single instruction, but I can assign a single char: all I need is a loop. FALSE! My situation is in effects more problematic, probably because also some of the sub-structures are packed... See below

These are the declarations I have (stripped down)

TYPE

ITEN = packed RECORD KEY :PACKED ARRAY [1..MAX] OF CHAR; PUNT:integer; END;

ND = packed RECORD POS : integer; IDX : packed ARRAY [1..ONDM2] OF ITEN; END;

VAR DATA : ND;

This assignment fails:

DATA.IDX[H1].KEY:= <array of char>;

I thought I could loop through this assignment: DATA.IDX[H1].KEY[x] := <char>; But it still fails. The compiler says: Error: cannot take address of packed record field `IDX'

BUT if the problem is with IDX, why this assignment is ok??? DATA.IDX[H1].PUNT := <integer>;

At the moment, the workaround I have found is:

VAR DATA : ND; TMP : ITEN;

TMP:=DATA.IDX[H1]; TMP.KEY:=<array of char>; DATA.IDX[H1]:=TMP;

I cannot really understand why (and if) this should be safer (from the compiler's poin of view) than doing DATA.IDX[H1].KEY:= <array of char>;

Any thought? Ciao Francesco Bonomi

Francesco Bonomi Si.lab s.r.l. Via Citille 13 50022 Greve in Chianti FI- Italy

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