RTTI Delphi Create as TValue an n-dimensional matrix

Question

Good day,

TValue is a Delphi-2010 and up RTTI feature.

Following on from my earlier question, I had tried to make recurrent function to return a TValue as a n-dimensional. matrix(2D, 3D, 4D...)

for example, this procedure will show a n-dimensional matrix(it will list all elements from a n-dimensional matrix as TValue variable):

Procedure Show(X:TValue);
var i:integer;
begin
   if x.IsArray then
   begin
      for i:=0 to x.GetArrayLength-1 do
          show(x.GetArrayElement(i));
      writeln;
   end else
   write(x.ToString,' ');

end;

I don't understand how to create a function to create from a TValue an n-dimensional matrix. For example i need a Function CreateDynArray(Dimensions:array of integer; Kind:TTypeKind):TValue; and the function will return a TValue which is a dynamic array how contain the dimenssions for example:

Return=CreateDynArray([2,3],tkInteger); will return a TValue as tkDynArray and if i will show(Return) will list

0 0 0
0 0 0

Is not terminated. From a TValue i try to create a DynArray with n-dimensions

Procedure CreateArray(var Value:TValue; NewDimmension:integer; NewValue2Kind:TTypeKind; NewValue2:TValue; IsLast:Boolean);
var i:integer;
NewValue:TValue;
len:Longint;
begin
   If Value.IsArray then// we have components in this dimension
   begin
       for i:=0 to Value.GetArrayLength-1 do// list all
       begin
            NewValue:=Value.GetArrayElement[i];
            CreateArray(newValue,NewDimension,NewValue2Kind,NewValue2,IsLast);
            Value.SetArrayElement(i,NewValue);
       end;
   end;
end else
begin
      if isLast then
      begin
         len:=NewDimension;
         DynArraySetLength(PPointer(Value.GetRefereneToRawData)^,Value.TypeInfo,1,@len); //set length to NewDimension
         for i:=0 to NewDimension-1 do //Fill all with 0
           Value.SetArrayElement(i,NewValue2);
      end else
      begin
         len:=NewDimension;
         DynArraySetLength(PPointer(Value.GetRefereneToRawData)^,Value.TypeInfo,1,@len);//I will create len TValues
      end;
end;



var Index:array of integer;
    Value:TValue;
    ValuKind:TTypeKind;
......
......
....
Case token of
   tokInt:
   begin
        ValueKind:=tkInteger;
        Value:=0;   
   end;
 .....
 end;

 Index:=GetIndexFromSintacticTree;//for example if i have int[20][30] index=[20,30]
 for i:=0 to high(index) do
 begin
    if i = high(index) then CreateArray(Variable.Value,Index[i],ValueKind,Value,True)
    else CreateArray(Variable.Value,Index[i],ValueKind,Value,False)
    //Variable.Value is TValue
 end;
 //first TValue have 1 element, after that it will have 20 elements, and after that will have 20*30 elements

Thank you very much, and have a nice day!

Answer 1

To create a dynamic array dynamically, you need a reference to its type info structure (PTypeInfo) to pass to DynArraySetLength; calling DynArraySetLength and passing a reference to a nil pointer is how you can create a new dynamic array. If the specific shape of dynamic array does not already exist in your Delphi program, there will be no specific PTypeInfo pointer that the compiler will generate for you. In this case, you would have to generate the corresponding PTypeInfo data structure yourself. This is possible, though tedious.

Frankly, I'd recommend you use a different structure than built-in Delphi dynamic arrays to represent arrays in your scripting language-like problem. In the long run it will probably be a lot less work than trying to dynamically generate the low-level RTTI data, which is more likely to change from version to version now that it has a much higher level abstraction in the Rtti unit.