With a new name and a new focus on CORBA, database drivers, and Microsoft Back Office applications, Inprise/Borland Delphi is enjoying a resurgence, with a growing user base of programmers who use Delphi for rapid development of enterprise computing applications. Not to rest on success, the latest version of Delphi, Version 5, includes further expansion and refinement of the 3-tier application framework introduced in Delphi 4 and has resulted in a prize-winning product.Delphi in a Nutshell is the first concise reference to Borland/Inprise Delphi available. It succinctly collects all the information you need in one easy-to-use, complete, and accurate volume that goes beyond the product documentation itself.Delphi in a Nutshell starts with the Delphi object model and how to use RTTI (Run Time Type Information) for efficient programming. The rest of the book is the most complete Delphi Pascal language reference available in print, detailing every language element with complete syntax, examples, and methods for use. The book concludes with a look at the compiler, discussing compiler directives in depth.

Ray Lischner began his career as a software developer, but dropped out of the corporate rat race to become an author. He started using C++ in the late 1980s, working at a company that was rewriting its entire product line in C++. Over the years, he has witnessed the evolution of C++ from cfront to native compilers to integrated development environments to visual, component-based tools. Ray has taught C++ at Oregon State University. He is the author of Delphi in a Nutshell and O'Reilly's upcoming C++ in a Nutshell, as well as other books.

Preface;
Not Your Father's Pascal;
Delphi for Linux;
About This Book;
Conventions Used in This Book;
For More Information;
How to Contact Us;
Acknowledgments;
Chapter 1: Delphi Pascal;
1.1 Units;
1.2 Programs;
1.3 Libraries;
1.4 Packages;
1.5 Data Types;
1.6 Variables and Constants;
1.7 Exception Handling;
1.8 File I/O;
1.9 Functions and Procedures;
Chapter 2: The Delphi Object Model;
2.1 Classes and Objects;
2.2 Interfaces;
2.3 Reference Counting;
2.4 Messages;
2.5 Memory Management;
2.6 Old-Style Object Types;
Chapter 3: Runtime Type Information;
3.1 Virtual Method Table;
3.2 Published Declarations;
3.3 The TypInfo Unit;
3.4 Virtual and Dynamic Methods;
3.5 Initialization and Finalization;
3.6 Automated Methods;
3.7 Interfaces;
3.8 Exploring RTTI;
Chapter 4: Concurrent Programming;
4.1 Threads and Processes;
4.2 The TThread Class;
4.3 The BeginThread and EndThread Functions;
4.4 Thread Local Storage;
4.5 Processes;
4.6 Futures;
Chapter 5: Language Reference;
Chapter 6: System Constants;
6.1 Variant Type Codes;
6.2 Open Array Types;
6.3 Virtual Method Table Offsets;
6.4 Runtime Error Codes;
Chapter 7: Operators;
7.1 Unary Operators;
7.2 Multiplicative Operators;
7.3 Additive Operators;
7.4 Comparison Operators;
Chapter 8: Compiler Directives;
Command-Line Tools;
The SysUtils Unit;
Errors and Exceptions;
File Management;
String Management;
Numeric Conversion;
Dates and Times;
Localization;
Modules;
Windows;
Miscellaneous;