Are delphi variables initialized with a value by default?

Question

I'm new to Delphi, and I've been running some tests to see what object variables and stack variables are initialized to by default:

TInstanceVariables = class   fBoolean: boolean; // always starts off as false   fInteger: integer; // always starts off as zero   fObject: TObject; // always starts off as nil end; 

This is the behaviour I'm used to from other languages, but I'm wondering if it's safe to rely on it in Delphi? For example, I'm wondering if it might depend on a compiler setting, or perhaps work differently on different machines. Is it normal to rely on default initialized values for objects, or do you explicitly set all instance variables in the constructor?

As for stack (procedure-level) variables, my tests are showing that unitialized booleans are true, unitialized integers are 2129993264, and uninialized objects are just invalid pointers (i.e. not nil). I'm guessing the norm is to always set procedure-level variables before accessing them?

Answer 1

Yes, this is the documented behaviour:

• Object fields are always initialized to 0, 0.0, '', False, nil or whatever applies.

• Global variables are always initialized to 0 etc as well;

• Local reference-counted* variables are always initialized to nil or '';

• Local non reference-counted* variables are uninitialized so you have to assign a value before you can use them.

I remember that Barry Kelly somewhere wrote a definition for "reference-counted", but cannot find it any more, so this should do in the meantime:

reference-counted == that are reference-counted themselves, or directly or indirectly contain fields (for records) or elements (for arrays) that are reference-counted like: string, variant, interface or dynamic array or static array containing such types.

Notes:

• record itself is not enough to become reference-counted
• I have not tried this with generics yet

Answer 2

Global variables that don't have an explicit initializer are allocated in the BSS section in the executable. They don't actually take up any space in the EXE; the BSS section is a special section that the OS allocates and clears to zero. On other operating systems, there are similar mechanisms.

You can depend on global variables being zero-initialized.