Porting from FPC/Delphi to pas2js
This page is for Delphians and FPC porting code to pas2js. It contains useful tips and common traps.
Numbers
- Internally all numbers are double. Therefore integers range from -9,007,199,254,740,991 to 9,007,199,254,740,991, so about 1/1024th of a 64bit value.
- There is no Int64 and no QWord.
- All bitwise operators are limited to 32bit, including the mod operator, which is limited to signed 32bit.
- Integers overflows at runtime differ from Delphi/FPC. For example adding var i: byte = 200; ... i:=i+100;' will result in i=300 instead of i=44 as in Delphi/FPC. When range checking {$R+} is enabled i:=300 will raise an ERangeError.
- Division by zero does not raise EDivByZero, instead it results in NaN.
- Currency has only 54 bits. Currency is internally a double, multiplied by 10000 and truncated. The below values are the safe limits, within every step exists. Since currency is a double it can take much larger values, but the result may differ from Delphi/FPC:
- MaxCurrency = 900719925474.0991; // fpc: 922337203685477.5807;
- MinCurrency = -900719925474.0991; // fpc: -922337203685477.5808;
Strings
- String is UnicodeString and there are no other string types.
- Strings are immutable in JS. That means changing a single character creates a new string. That's why some fast Delphi/FPC string functions are much slower in pas2js.
Asynchronous vs Waiting
JavaScript enforces an absolute async manner of programming:
- Many calls are asynchronous and return immediately. For example loading a resource.
- There is no Application.ProcessMessages. You cannot wait till some event occurs. You must set an event. That's why anonymous functions are so frequently used in JS - they keep the local variables accessible.
- There is no multithreading, no shared memory. Many browsers/JS engines support webworkers, but that is more like processes than threads.
Details
A more detailed list can be found in the translation.html.file in the sources.
From the Free Pascal wiki, page "Porting from FPC/Delphi to pas2js", as it stood on 2023-03-08 after a change by Kai Burghardt, out of the wiki's dump of 2024-05-26. Copyright stays with the author who wrote it, according to the old wiki's Licensing page. If you have concerns about this material, message the admin.