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delphidelphi-5widestring

How to access characters of a WideString by index?

i have the following code snippit that won't compile:

procedure Frob(const Grob: WideString);
var
   s: WideString;
begin
   s := 
       Grob[7]+Grob[8]+Grob[5]+Grob[6]+Grob[3]+Grob[4]+Grob[1]+Grob[2];
   ...
end;

Delphi5 complains Incompatible types.

i tried simplifying it down to:

s := Grob[7];

which works, and:

s := Grob[7]+Grob[8];

which does not.

i can only assume that WideString[index] does not return a WideChar.

i tried forcing things to be WideChars:

s := WideChar(Grob[7])+WideChar(Grob[8]);

But that also fails:

Incompatible types

Footnotes

  • 5: Delphi 5
Solution

  • Grob[7] is a WideChar; that's not the issue.

    The issue seems to be that the + operator cannot act on wide chars. But it can act on wide strings, and any wide char can be cast to a wide string:

    S := WideString(Grob[7]) + WideString(Grob[8]);