Question

I’ve got rows of two values (input from console) that look likes this:

David 89000
Peter 99500
Jim 23999
END 1

is there a way to save the string and number into a variable other than to loop-read a char when you don’t know the string length?

 str:=''; salary:=0; i:=1;
  while str<> 'END' do
  begin
    str:='';  salary:=0;
    read(ch);
    while ch <> ' ' do
      begin
        str:=str+ch;
        read(ch);
      end;
    read(salary);

    array[i].name:=str;
    array[i].salary:=salary;
    i:=i+1;
    readln;
  end;

Answer 1

You can do it with a single call to ReadLn and then parse the input yourself:

var
  TextIn: string;
  Person: string;
  Salary: Integer;
begin
  while true do
  begin
    ReadLn(TextIn);  // Requires user to hit Enter
    if Copy(TextIn, 1, 3) <> 'END' then
    begin
      Person := Copy(TextIn, 1, Pos(' ', TextIn) - 1);
      Salary := StrToInt(Copy(TextIn, Pos(' ', TextIn) + 1, 255);
    end
    else
      Exit;
  end;
end;

I didn’t include any error checking (which should be there), because your original code doesn’t have any either.