In his most recent post, Chris Rolliston points out a gotcha resulting from a change in the VCL with XE3. The post itself is quite interesting and makes some valid and significant observations. However, in the follow up comments Chris makes the observation that the old code was lazy, relied on a compiler detail and should have been “properly” re-written, rather than replacing reliance on one compiler detail with another.

I think it is worth highlighting that Chris’ observations here are – I believe – directed at the use of untyped pointers and dynamic arrays, not the use of the pointer exposed by the TList class itself, as the two things could easily be conflated when reading Chris’ post and the QC issue it refers to.

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