What the equivalent of BYTE array (BYTE[]) in Delphi with null termination a integer?

Question

I'm stuck in this trouble where the compiler says:

Incompatible types: 'AnsiChar' and 'Integer'

to the last element of AnsiChar array, that is a integer that is a null termination. How fix it?

C++ code:

static const BYTE  myarray[] = { 'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H', 'I', 0 };
SOCKET s;

// Usage example:
if(Send(s, (char *) myarray, sizeof(myarray), 0) <= 0)
      return;

My attempt in Delphi:

var
  MyArray: array [0 .. MAX_PATH] of AnsiChar = ( 'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H', 'I', 0 );
  S: TSocket;

// Usage example:
send(S, MyArray, Length(MyArray), 0);

Answer 1

You can almost define it the way you did:

var
  MyArray: array[0..MAX_PATH] of AnsiChar = ('A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H', 'I', #0);

But then you get an error complaining about the number of elements, so you would have to add some 250 extra zeroes to complete it:

// Possible, but not necessary, see below 
var
  MyArray: array[0..MAX_PATH] of AnsiChar = 
    ('A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H', 
     'I',  #0,  #0,  #0,  #0, ....
                ...
                ...
                ...            #0,  #0,  #0); 

This can be done much simpler, however:

var
  MyArray: array[0..MAX_PATH] of AnsiChar = 'ABCDEFGHI';

This special syntax should work in most versions of Delphi and not get a compiler error.

For the length during a send(), you'll have to use StrLen(), not Length():

send(S, MyArray, StrLen(MyArray) + 1, 0);

Alternatively, you can do this:

var
  Stg: AnsiString;
begin
  Stg := 'ABCDEFGHI';
  // Second parameter is untyped const, so use ^
  send(S, PAnsiChar(Stg)^, Length(Stg) + 1, 0);

---

FWIW, #0 is the character with ordinal value 0. Alternatives are:

Chr(0)
#0
^@ (meaning Control+@; ^A = #1 = Chr(1), ^M = #13, etc.)

Each of the above has the same meaning.