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3.3.3 Set types

Free Pascal supports the set types as in Turbo Pascal. The prototype of a set declaration is:

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Set Types

-- - - - ------------------------------------ set type set of ordinal type
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Each of the elements of SetType must be of type TargetType. TargetType can be any ordinal type with a range between 0 and 255. A set can contain at most 255 elements. The following are valid set declaration:

Type  
  Junk = Set of Char;  
  Days = (Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun);  
 
Var  
  WorkDays : Set of days;

Given these declarations, the following assignment is legal:

WorkDays := [Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri];

The compiler stores small sets (less than 32 elements) in a Longint, if the type range allows it. This allows for faster processing and decreases program size. Otherwise, sets are stored in 32 bytes.

Several operations can be done on sets: taking unions or differences, adding or removing elements, comparisons. These are documented in section 12.8.5, page 584

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