Conditional ternary operators For FreePascal?

[marcov]

Any really useful new syntax in Delphi?  Seems it is all shorthand and copycatting nowadays.

But they are highly requested by many people long time ago, at least by Delphi users. Maybe FreePascal targets different sets of developers.

It is not the developers of Delphi that decide the features, but marketing.

You could say they are all short handed, but many modern languages, even C++ is adding more syntax sugar to the language.

I can't speak for C++, but in Delphi's case it is obviously riskless superficial features to keep the subscription train going.

[marcov]

So this is not just syntactic sugar, it allows you to use complex expressions on constants that was not possible before.

And you think THAT is the reason it was added ? 

[nanobit]

Look at the C standard, C itself takes a lot of new features from other languages. For example since 2023 C now supports enum types without an underlying ordinal type, something that first was introduced in Pascal.

Wrong. C enum has an underlying ordinal type: default type or declared type (newer feature).

[Martin_fr]

This thread is moderated. Please see the note on top (in the first message of this thread)

[gues1]

Well this is not just syntactic sugar, it allows you to do the following:

Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]

1. const a = if cond then val1 else val2;

A constant can only be assigned exactly once, so the following is not possible:

Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]

1. const a;
2. if cond then a:=val1 else a:=val2;

So this is not just syntactic sugar, it allows you to use complex expressions on constants that was not possible before.

The idea that a constant can be dynamically assigned a value is, well, a fallacy. By definition, a constant is constant. It does not change based on context or conditions. Therefore, that concession on the current proprietors of Delphi is most likely chasing the .NET shadow or whatever language occupies the latest fad.

Who said that in Delphi you can write a thing like that (I mean const c := if ....) ?

From what I know, this certainly isn't possible in the normal variable declaration sections (interface, implementation, and as local variable). The const declaration must be known at compiler time, not at runtime, and the "if" statement already contradicts this.

If we then talk about the concept of inline variables (which isn't part of FPC), then perhaps this will be possible because it can be resolved at runtime.
But will see when Delphi 13 Florence wil be out.

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[PascalDragon]

If there is something in Delphi, then it should be brought to FreePascal as early as possible

No. There can be features where we feel that the spirit of Pascal is violated too much (inline variables) or the implementations are simply not trivial (implements on a field of a class type, dynamic packages, delayed imports).