In Delphi 7, why can I assign a value to a const?

Question

I copied some Delphi code from one project to another, and found that it doesn\'t compile in the new project, though it did in the old one. The code looks something like thi

Answer 1

Like Barry said, people took advantage of consts; One of the ways this was used, was for keeping track of singleton instances. If you look at a classic singleton implementation, you would see this :

  // Example implementation of the Singleton pattern.
  TSingleton = class(TObject)
  protected
    constructor CreateInstance; virtual;
    class function AccessInstance(Request: Integer): TSingleton;
  public
    constructor Create; virtual;
    destructor Destroy; override;
    class function Instance: TSingleton;
    class procedure ReleaseInstance;
  end;

constructor TSingleton.Create;
begin
  inherited Create;

  raise Exception.CreateFmt('Access class %s through Instance only', [ClassName]);
end;

constructor TSingleton.CreateInstance;
begin
  inherited Create;

  // Do whatever you would normally place in Create, here.
end;

destructor TSingleton.Destroy;
begin
  // Do normal destruction here

  if AccessInstance(0) = Self then
    AccessInstance(2);

  inherited Destroy;
end;

{$WRITEABLECONST ON}
class function TSingleton.AccessInstance(Request: Integer): TSingleton;
const
  FInstance: TSingleton = nil;
begin
  case Request of
    0 : ;
    1 : if not Assigned(FInstance) then
          FInstance := CreateInstance;
    2 : FInstance := nil;
  else
    raise Exception.CreateFmt('Illegal request %d in AccessInstance', [Request]);
  end;
  Result := FInstance;
end;
{$IFNDEF WRITEABLECONST_ON}
  {$WRITEABLECONST OFF}
{$ENDIF}

class function TSingleton.Instance: TSingleton;
begin
  Result := AccessInstance(1);
end;

class procedure TSingleton.ReleaseInstance;
begin
  AccessInstance(0).Free;
end;