I've encountered some strange behaviour of delphi XE3 compiler (i compile for x86 architecture).
Imagine i have class with one field - custom record with several field of simple types:
TPage = class
type
TParagraph = record
public
FOwner: TPage;
FFirst: Integer;
FSecond: Integer;
procedure Select;
end;
public
FSelected: TParagraph;
end;
procedure TPage.TParagraph.Select;
begin
FOwner.FSelected:=Self;
end;
The logic is my page can contain several paragraphs and in some moments i want one of these paragraphs become selected (to be able to do some actions with it in other parts of my programm):
procedure TMainForm.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
var
lcPage: TPage;
lcParagraph: TPage.TParagraph;
begin
lcPage:=TPage.Create;
try
<...>
lcParagraph.FOwner:=lcPage;
lcParagraph.FFirst:=1;
lcParagraph.FSecond:=2;
lcParagraph.Select;
<...>
finally
lcPage.Free;
end;
Everything is ok when my record do not exceed some size. One reference and two integers is ok, in this case i get assembler instructions like this:
MainUnit.pas.350: FOwner.FSelected:=Self;
00C117B3 8B45FC mov eax,[ebp-$04]
00C117B6 8B00 mov eax,[eax]
00C117B8 8B55FC mov edx,[ebp-$04]
00C117BB 8B0A mov ecx,[edx]
00C117BD 894804 mov [eax+$04],ecx
00C117C0 8B4A04 mov ecx,[edx+$04]
00C117C3 894808 mov [eax+$08],ecx
00C117C6 8B4A08 mov ecx,[edx+$08]
00C117C9 89480C mov [eax+$0c],ecx
I can see three correct movs which copies memory from local record to class`.
But! If i add more fields to my record, the generated asm code changes and the record assignment no longer performs correctly.
TParagraph = record
public
FOwner: TPage;
FFirst: Integer;
FSecond: Integer;
FThird: Integer;
procedure Select;
end;
MainUnit.pas.350: FOwner.FSelected:=Self;
00C117C9 8B45FC mov eax,[ebp-$04]
00C117CC 8B55FC mov edx,[ebp-$04]
00C117CF 8B12 mov edx,[edx]
00C117D1 8BF2 mov esi,edx
00C117D3 8D7A04 lea edi,[edx+$04]
00C117D6 A5 movsd
00C117D7 A5 movsd
00C117D8 A5 movsd
00C117D9 A5 movsd
And then i get garbage in class' record FSelected:
After the lea instuction the CPU state is such:
In this example 02D37280 is the address of my lcPage class, so 02D37284 should contain start of its field - FSelected record. But movsd instruction copies memory from ESI to EDI, from 02D37280 to 02D37284, which make absolutly no sense! If i change ESI register to value of EAX (19F308), which is start of my local lcParagraph variable, the copy is performed properply:
Is what i described is known bug? Or am i missing something fundamental about delphi? Is this a good way to assign records? I can easily workaround the problem, for example, by changing FOwner.FSelected:=Self;
to CopyMemory(@FOwner.FSelected, @Self, SizeOf(Self));
in procedure TPage.TParagraph.Select;
. But i want to figure out what is wrong.
Minimal reproducible example:
program RecordAssignmentIssue;
{$APPTYPE CONSOLE}
{$R *.res}
uses
System.SysUtils;
type
TPage = class
type
TParagraph = record
public
FOwner: TPage;
FFirst: Integer;
FSecond: Integer;
FThird: Integer;
procedure Select;
end;
public
FSelected: TParagraph;
end;
procedure TPage.TParagraph.Select;
begin
FOwner.FSelected:=Self;
end;
var
lcPage: TPage;
lcParagraph: TPage.TParagraph;
begin
try
lcPage:=TPage.Create;
try
lcParagraph.FOwner:=lcPage;
lcParagraph.FFirst:=1;
lcParagraph.FSecond:=2;
lcParagraph.FThird:=3;
lcParagraph.Select;
Assert(CompareMem(@lcPage.FSelected, @lcParagraph, SizeOf(lcParagraph)));
// get rid of FThird and assertion will pass
finally
lcPage.Free;
end;
except
on E: Exception do
Writeln(E.ClassName, ': ', E.Message);
end;
end.
This is a bug that is still present in Delphi 11 (thanks to LU RD for confirming that). You should submit a bug report to Quality Portal.
In the meantime, I think that you can work around it by making the assignment in TPage
rather than TParagraph
. Like this:
program RecordAssignmentIssue;
{$APPTYPE CONSOLE}
uses
System.SysUtils;
type
TPage = class
type
TParagraph = record
public
FOwner: TPage;
FFirst: Integer;
FSecond: Integer;
FThird: Integer;
procedure Select;
end;
private
procedure Select(const Paragraph: TParagraph);
public
FSelected: TParagraph;
end;
procedure TPage.TParagraph.Select;
begin
FOwner.Select(Self);
end;
{ TPage }
procedure TPage.Select(const Paragraph: TParagraph);
begin
FSelected:=Paragraph;
end;
var
lcPage: TPage;
lcParagraph: TPage.TParagraph;
begin
try
lcPage:=TPage.Create;
try
lcParagraph.FOwner:=lcPage;
lcParagraph.FFirst:=1;
lcParagraph.FSecond:=2;
lcParagraph.FThird:=3;
lcParagraph.Select;
Assert(CompareMem(@lcPage.FSelected, @lcParagraph, SizeOf(lcParagraph)));
// get rid of FThird and assertion will pass
finally
lcPage.Free;
end;
except
on E: Exception do
Writeln(E.ClassName, ': ', E.Message);
end;
end.
Or another very simple workaround is just to introduce an extra local pointer variable to hold a pointer to Self
:
procedure TPage.TParagraph.Select;
var
P: ^TParagraph;
begin
P := @Self;
FOwner.FSelected := P^;
end;