Hint directives

1.5 Hint directives

Most identifiers (constants, variables, functions or methods, properties) can have a hint directive appended to their definition:

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Hint directives

--hint directive--|-------------------------------------------------
-Deprecated -|---------------|
| -string constant- |
|-------Experimental---------|
----------Platform ----------|
Unimplemented
___________________________________________________________________

Whenever an identifier marked with a hint directive is later encountered by the compiler, then a warning will be displayed, corresponding to the specified hint.

deprecated: The use of this identifier is deprecated, use an alternative instead. The deprecated keyword can be followed by a string constant with a message. The compiler will show this message whenever the identifier is encountered.
experimental: The use of this identifier is experimental: this can be used to flag new features that should be used with caution.
platform: This is a platform-dependent identifier: it may not be defined on all platforms.
unimplemented: This should be used on functions and procedures only. It should be used to signal that a particular feature has not yet been implemented.

The following are examples:

Const
  AConst = 12 deprecated;

var
  p : integer platform;

Function Something : Integer; experimental;

begin
  Something:=P+AConst;
end;

begin
  Something;
end.

This would result in the following output:

testhd.pp(11,15) Warning: Symbol "p" is not portable
testhd.pp(11,22) Warning: Symbol "AConst" is deprecated
testhd.pp(15,3) Warning: Symbol "Something" is experimental

Hint directives can follow all kinds of identifiers: units, constants, types, variables, functions, procedures and methods.

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