Further Reading: Generics

Official Documentation

  • Free Pascal Reference Guide — Generics https://www.freepascal.org/docs-html/ref/refse61.html The official documentation on generic types, generic functions, specialization, and type constraints in Free Pascal.

  • Free Pascal — fgl Unit Documentation https://www.freepascal.org/docs-html/rtl/fgl/index.html Reference for TFPGList<T>, TFPGObjectList<T>, TFPGMap<K,V>, and other built-in generic collections.

Books

  • Marco Cantu, Object Pascal Handbook (latest edition) Comprehensive coverage of generics in Object Pascal, including both Free Pascal and Delphi syntax. Excellent discussion of type constraints and practical collection patterns.

  • Martin Fowler, Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture (2002) The Repository pattern discussed in Case Study 2 originates here. Fowler's treatment is language-agnostic and provides deep insight into data access patterns that map well to generic implementations.

  • Robert Sedgewick, Kevin Wayne, Algorithms (4th edition, 2011) While written in Java, this textbook's generic data structure implementations (stacks, queues, priority queues, symbol tables) map directly to Pascal generics. Excellent reference for generic algorithm design.

Articles and Online Resources

  • "Generics" — Free Pascal Wiki https://wiki.freepascal.org/Generics Practical guide to generics in Free Pascal, with examples and common patterns. Covers differences between {$mode objfpc}` and `{$mode delphi} syntax.

  • "FGL — Free Component Library" https://wiki.freepascal.org/FGL Documentation for the Free Pascal Generic Library, including performance characteristics and usage patterns for each collection type.

  • Chapter 9: Arrays — The foundation that generics build upon. Generic collections replace fixed-size and dynamic arrays with type-safe, resizable containers.
  • Chapter 15: Linked Lists and Dynamic Data Structures — The pointer-based implementations that generics replace. Case Study 1 shows the before/after comparison.
  • Chapter 16: Classes and Objects — Understanding classes is prerequisite to understanding generic classes.
  • Chapter 18: Interfaces — Interfaces and generics combine powerfully: generic classes with interface constraints, generic repositories with interface-based data access.
  • Chapter 21: Advanced Object Pascal — Operator overloading can make generic types more expressive (e.g., + for TVector<T>).
  • Chapter 23: Sorting Algorithms — Generic sorting algorithms apply the concepts from this chapter to classical sorting problems.