CONTRIBUTING.md

Code formating

Beautifier

Use internal JEDI Code Formater in Lazarus (Ctrl+D), with next settings changed:

• Spaces
  • Spaces before colon in = 1 in all cases (Var, Const, Procedure, etc.)
  • Tabs to spaces = 2
• Line Breaking
  • Width length = 80

For / While / Repeat

Repeat esentially is different from For and While, if it's required at least one iterarion you can use it.

Between For and While... maybe While in most cases:

• For is better when we need to skip values inside a fixed length iteration with Continue, making less anidated conditionals and clearer code.
• While is better when whole iteration must be aborted in the middle and it's a must when iteration length is variable. For example, removing items from a list (the counter value must not be incremented, unless it goes backwards...).

String Constants

Ideally, all string constants must be cleared as constants in const section (or as resource string in resourcestring section if translatable).

This include '' = EmptyStr

.ToXXXX helpers

As FPC 3.0 (and 2.6 for records and classes), FPC has [Helper_types](https://wiki.freepascal.org/Helper_types. It's clearer in code to use them.

var
  a: integer
  s: string
begin
  a := 2;
  
  s := IntToStr(a); // Classic
  
  s := a.ToString;  // Helper Type
end;

In Classic method; if a is changed to real, IntToStr must be change too.