How can I assign a value to a Char array?

Question

Say I have the variable:

Var question : array[1..50] of char;

When I do:

question := 't'; //What is the correct way to change the value?

It returns an error:

Incompatible types: 'array[1..50] of Char' and 'Char'

Note: I want to have a max string size of 50 chars, not 50 different chars.

The reason for this question is that I have a record in another unit(This is just a basic example, not what I actually have written above) In that unit I have a Record, which I can't use the string data type in(Or is there a way? please explain if there is). I just need to know how to give an array of chars a value.

Answer 1

While Delphi strings and arrays of char are related, they are not the same.

Delphi overloads assignment of strings and literals (char and string) to array of chars, but only when the lower array bound is zero.

The following code works for me in D2007 and Delphi XE:

  var x : array[0..49] of char;
  begin
    x:='b';  // char literal
    x:='bb';  // string literal      
  end.

If I change the [0 to [1 it fails. This limitation probably simplifies the language helper that takes care of this, and probably the feature is only meant for dealing with converted C structs where arrays always have lower bound 0.