Delphi in a Nutshell

by Ray Lischner

Examples

Download (374KB) the example projects now. Run the setup program to copy all the source code examples to your hard drive. Then open Nutshell.bpg in Delphi and away you go. Build all the projects, peruse the source code, install the Nut50.bpl design-time package, or do all three.

Note that when you build the cltn50.bpl and nutshl50.bpl runtime packages, they are installed to your Windows system directory. All the .dcu files are compiled into the lib directory, and the programs are compiled into the bin directory.

Note that the downloaded source code might differ from some of the examples in the book. The printed examples are often simplified to highlight an important point, but the downloaded source code contains the full complexity of a working project.

The source code examples are described below:

Collections

Interface-based collection classes. These classes are not discussed in the book, but are needed for the VmtInfo project. The package options save the cltn50.bpl package in your Windows system directory.

CpuID

Show the CPU identification using the CPUID instruction. See the nutshl50\cpuid.pas file for an example of ASM programming in Delphi.

Font Name Wizard

Trivial IDE extension that causes the TFont.Name property editor to display font names using the respective fonts. Demonstration of writing a DLL in Delphi.

Mandelbrot

Draw the Mandelbrot set. This project computes the set in a background thread, leaving the foreground thread free for user interaction. Demonstration of multi-threaded programming.

Memory Manager

Example of how to replace Delphi's memory manager with your own. This manager detects the presence of memory leaks.

Nutshl50

Smaller examples, many of which are used in the other projects. This directory contains the nut50 designtime package and the nutshl50 runtime package.

Test

Test application for the Nutshl50 package. The page tabs are mostly self-explanatory.

Threaditor

Multi-threaded text editor. Demonstrates the use of threads to print in the background and to perform text searches in the background.

VmtInfo

Displays Runtime Type Information (RTTI), including undocumented fields in a class's virtual method table (VMT). Add your own types and classes to explore their RTTI, too.