Question

I have the following function that works in Delphi 2006, but under Delphi XE2 it gives either an access violation error or a privileged instruction error when processing RET.

function Q_TrimChar(const S: string; Ch: Char): string;
asm
        PUSH    ESI
        MOV     ESI,ECX
        TEST    EAX,EAX
        JE      @@qt
        MOV     ECX,[EAX-4]
        TEST    ECX,ECX
        JE      @@qt
        PUSH    EBX
        PUSH    EDI
        MOV     EBX,EAX
        MOV     EDI,EDX
        XOR     EDX,EDX
        MOV     EAX,ESI
        CALL    System.@LStrFromPCharLen
        MOV     EDX,EDI
        MOV     ECX,[EBX-4]
@@lp1:  CMP     DL,BYTE PTR [EBX]
        JNE     @@ex1
        INC     EBX
        DEC     ECX
        JNE     @@lp1
        MOV     EDX,[ESI]
        JMP     @@wq
@@ex1:  DEC     ECX
@@lp2:  CMP     DL,BYTE PTR [EBX+ECX]
        JNE     @@ex2
        DEC     ECX
        JMP     @@lp2
@@ex2:  MOV     EDI,[ESI]
        LEA     EDX,[EDI+ECX+1]
@@lp3:  MOV     AL,BYTE PTR [EBX+ECX]
        MOV     BYTE PTR [EDI+ECX],AL
        DEC     ECX
        JNS     @@lp3
@@wq:   MOV     EAX,[ESI]
        MOV     BYTE PTR [EDX],0
        SUB     EDX,EAX
        MOV     [EAX-4],EDX
        POP     EDI
        POP     EBX
        POP     ESI
        RET
@@qt:   MOV     EAX,ESI
        CALL    System.@LStrClr
        POP     ESI
end;

I don’t know assembly very well. What is the problem?

Answer 1

I completely agree with David’s suggestion to simply code this in Pascal and have upvoted that answer. Unless profiling has indicated that this is a true bottleneck then there’s really no need for the ASM. Here are two versions. The first is easier to read but the second is more efficient:

function Q_TrimChar(const S: string; Ch: Char): string;
begin
  result := S;
  while (result <> '') and (result[1] = Ch) do Delete(Result, 1, 1);
  while (result <> '') and (result[Length(Result)] = Ch) do Delete(Result, Length(Result), 1);
end;

function Q_TrimChar(const S: string; Ch: Char): string;
var
  First, Last : integer;
begin
  First := 1;
  Last := Length(S);
  while (First < Last) and (S[First] = Ch) do inc(First);
  while (Last >= First) and (S[Last] = Ch) do Dec(Last);
  Result := copy(S, First, Last-First+1);
end;