Delphi for .NET Developer’s Guide

The System.String Type

Suffice it to say that the System.String type is likely the most widely used data type. In the Delphi language, the String type maps directly to the WideString. A WideString is a Unicode string meaning that each character is two bytes in width. In fact, the WideString data type is an alias for the System.String type in .NET. This mapping of the String/WideString Delphi type to a .NET System.String data type is an implementation detail. The Delphi String type at the language level does not behave identically to System.String. The behavior (or implementation) is the same only if you cast a Delphi String to a System.String. One of these differences is that Delphi strings are initially empty ('') with a zero length. System.String ...