How do i construct a WideString with a diacratic in a non-unicode Delphi version?

Question

i am trying to construct a (test) WideString of:

á (U+00E1 Small Letter Latin A with acute)

but using it\'s decomp

Answer 1

Did you try #$0301#$0061 (i.e. diacritic first)?

OK.

So #$.... only handles ASCII 8 bits constants in this version.

You can just use a workaround using memory level:

type
    TWordArray  = array[1..MaxInt div SizeOf(word)-2] of word;
    // start at [1], just as WideStrings
    // or: TWordArray  = array[0..MaxInt div SizeOf(word)-1] of word;
    PWordArray = ^TWordArray;

var
  test: WideString;
begin
  test := '12'; // or SetLength(test,2);
  PWordArray(test)[1] := $61; 
  PWordArray(test)[2] := $301;
  MessageBoxW(0, pointer(test), 'Character with diacratic', MB_ICONINFORMATION or MB_OK);
end;

This will always work since you don't play with chars/widechars and such.

And it will also work as expected with Unicode version of Delphi.