Pointer(s)^ versus s[1]

Question

In a function that reads data (data meaning exclusively strings) from disk, which should I prefer? Which is better?

A) DiskStream.Read(Pointer(s         


        

Answer 1

Definitely the array notation. Part of Delphi style is to make your code easy to read, and it's easier to tell what's going on when you spell out exactly what you're doing. Casting a string to a pointer and then dereferencing it looks confusing; why are you doing that? It doesn't make sense unless the reader knows a lot about string internals.