[Lazarus] Nested Classes used as Namespace Issue

[Sven Barth]

Am 11.01.2011 14:49, schrieb Razvan Adrian Bogdan:
> On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 9:48 PM, Sven Barth <pascaldragon at googlemail.com
> <mailto:pascaldragon at googlemail.com>> wrote:
>
>     In Pascal all type declarations appear in blocks that are named
>     "type". This is the case in global unit scope, in local method scope
>     and in class scope as well. So I don't think one should brake with
>     the way Pascal works just to create code that looks more beautiful.
>
>     And this is also Delphi compatible.
>
> Yes i agree this is indeed how it works, what i meant was: Why not do it
> the same way the Records work.
> You can nest records and you don't use the type keyword for the nested
> records, the parser/compiler knows how to recognize a "subrecord". By
> making the type keyword optional you don't break anything and the
> compiler isn't confused and it is the way records work already and this
> behavior is much older and cleaner than the way it's implemented now.
>   type
>     TMyStruct = record
>       NestedStruct = record
>         SimpleMember: string;
>       end;
>     end;
>   Just replace record with class and no type keyword is required, it's
> simple, clean and not ambiguous in any way. For declaring other types
> inside the class is would probably require the type keyword just not for
> nested classes/records.

No, that doesn't work that way in records. You can only have a record 
field that has a inline defined type, but you can't access that type by 
its name anywhere (it's something like an anonymous type). You can do 
that in classes as well by the way (but only with records).

E.g.
type
   TMyStruct = record
     SubStructField: record // <= note the colon
                       SimpleMember: String;
                     end;
   end;

   TMyClass = class
     SubStructField: record
                       Foo: Integer;
                     end;
   end;

Regards,
Sven