Initialise string function result?

Question

I\'ve just been debugging a problem with a function that returns a string that has got me worried. I\'ve always assumed that the implicit Result variable for functions that

Answer 1

If you think that some automatic management of strings are made to make your life easier, you're only partly right. All such things are also done to make string logic consistent and side-effects free.

In plenty of places there are string passed by reference, passed by value, but all these lines are expecting VALID strings in whose memory-management counter is some valid, not a garbage value. So in order to keep strings valid the only thing for sure is that they should be initialized when they firstly introduced. For example, for any local variable string this is a necessity since this is the place a string is introduced. All other string usage including function(): string (that actually procedure(var Result: string) as Alexander correctly pointed out) just expects valid strings on the stack, not initialized. And validness here comes from the fact that (var Result: string) construction says that "I'm waiting for a valid variable that definetly was introduced before". UPDATE: Because of that the actual contents of Result is unexpected, but due to the same logic, if it's the only call to this function that has a local variable at the left, the emptiness of the string in this case is guaranteed.