> My thinking was that because variables can assign values at declaration it would be reasonable to assume that record fields could have default values which would be assigned at declaration. It sounds like a natural extension of the syntax that already exists.
Those are two different things actually: Declaration time initialization for variables vs default record field values. The former doesn't cause confusion because the value and the variable are in the same place, but the latter does, as Sven said: "On the other hand to know whether the fields are initialized or not you'd need to navigate to the type which means leaving your current zone of development." Now suppose you have that feature a record type T in unit A, then a code somewhere that uses unit A has a variable V of type T declared. How could you be sure what value that V holds? At best you have to initialize it right there anyway, making the default value useless. Certainly don't imagine you're the writer of unit A who knows that T has some default values. Other languages POV are mostly simply ease of typing, they don't think the consequences this far. -- Sent from: http://free-pascal-general.1045716.n5.nabble.com/ _______________________________________________ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal