VCL and RTL Changes for XE
From RAD Studio XE
Go Up to What's New in Delphi and C++Builder XE
- Display Preferences Added:
- In the online help, you can now specify one language (Delphi or C++) to display on the reference pages of the VCL/RTL. This affects the code signature or declaration syntax, at the top of the page. Click the Display Preferences tab in the upper-right corner of the page:
- Then select the check box for the language you want to see, and clear the check box for other languages.
- In the online help, you can now specify one language (Delphi or C++) to display on the reference pages of the VCL/RTL. This affects the code signature or declaration syntax, at the top of the page. Click the Display Preferences tab in the upper-right corner of the page:
- TimeStamp Added to TSearchRec:
- SysUtils.TSearchRec now has a property called TimeStamp, which returns a TDateTime for easy cross-platform consumption when using FindFirst/FindNext.
- A new set of tools for timezone support -- TTimeZone.
- Conversions between Local Time and UTC, support for Daylight Savings Time.
- Binary streams manipulation with TBinaryReader and TBinaryWriter.
- A regular expression library has been integrated into the Delphi RTL:
- RegularExpressions
- RegularExpressions.TRegEx is the main record for the user to match and replace with regular expressions. The members of the RegularExpressions unit make up an interface very close to the MSDN interface, except RegularExpressions is implemented with records instead of classes, and therefore it does not use inheritance.
- RegularExpressionsCore
- RegularExpressionsCore.TPerlRegEx implements Perl-compatible regular expressions (http://www.regular-expressions.info/pcre.html). The RegularExpressionsCore interface can be called directly, but is also the underlying base for the RegularExpressions interface.
- RegularExpressions
- New file management extensions:
- Added Support for Symbolic Links -- TSymLinkRec.
- New functionalities for TPath, TDirectory, and TFile records.
- A new Windows-specific method, TPath.GetHomePath, which returns the path to the application data folder.
- Unicode support for strings stored on files.
- The ability to read a list of strings according to a specific Unicode format -- TStrings.DefaultEncoding.
- The ability to determine the encoding when reading a file, record it in the TStrings.Encoding property, and use it when re-writing the file.
- C++ VCL Applications Now Use Unicode by Default:
- New C++ VCL applications and C++ console applications that use VCL now default to _TCHAR type
wchar_t(Unicode) instead ofchar. See _TCHAR Mapping and Enabling C++ Applications for Unicode.
- New C++ VCL applications and C++ console applications that use VCL now default to _TCHAR type
- TThread.Suspend and TThread.Resume are deprecated:
- Proper thread synchronization techniques should be based on SyncObjs.TEvent and SyncObjs.TMutex. Also, see Freezing and Thawing Threads in the Debugger.
- New classes for thread synchronization: atomic operations on data shared between multiple threads -- TInterlocked, locking mechanisms -- TSpinWait, TSpinLock.
- TConnectionPoint, TConnectionPoints, and TConnectionKind have been moved to the ComObj unit.
- Aliases for these remain in the AxCtrls unit for backward compatibility.
- New string splitting capability using StrUtils.SplitString:
- StrUtils.SplitString uses a string of delimiters to split an input string into an array of substrings of type Types.TStringDynArray.
