Generic real types Type Range Significant digits Size in bytes Real -5.0 x 10^324 .. 1.7 x 10^308 1516
8
Note: The six-byte Real48 type was called Real in earlier versions of Object Pascal. If you are recompiling code
that uses the older, six-byte Real type in Delphi, you may want to change it to Real48. You can also use the
{$REALCOMPATIBILITY ON}
compiler directive to turn Real back into the six-byte type.
The following remarks apply to fundamental real types.
Real48 is maintained for backward compatibility. Since its storage format is not native to the Intel processor
architecture, it results in slower performance than other floating-point types. The Real48 type has been
deprecated on the .NET platform.
Extended offers greater precision than other real types but is less portable. Be careful using Extended if you
are creating data files to share across platforms.
The Comp (computational) type is native to the Intel processor architecture and represents a 64-bit integer. It
is classified as a real, however, because it does not behave like an ordinal type. (For example, you cannot
increment or decrement a Comp value.) Comp is maintained for backward compatibility only. Use the Int64 type
for better performance.
Currency is a fixed-point data type that minimizes rounding errors in monetary calculations. On the Win32
platform, it is stored as a scaled 64-bit integer with the four least significant digits implicitly representing decimal
places. When mixed with other real types in assignments and expressions, Currency values are automatically
divided or multiplied by 10000.
69
String Types This topic describes the string data types available in the Delphi language. The following types are covered:
Short strings.
Long strings.
Wide (Unicode) strings.
