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#### 12.8.7 Class operators

Class operators are slightly different from the operators above in the sense that they can only be used in class expressions which return a class. There are only 2 class operators, as can be seen in table (12.8).

Table 12.8: Class operators

Operator | Action

is | Checks class type
as | Conditional typecast

An expression containing the is operator results in a boolean type. The is operator can only be used with a class reference or a class instance. The usage of this operator is as follows:

Object is Class

This expression is completely equivalent to

Object.InheritsFrom(Class)

If Object is Nil, False will be returned.

The following are examples:

Var
A : TObject;
B : TClass;
begin
if A is TComponent then ;
If A is B then;
end;

The as operator performs a conditional typecast. It results in an expression that has the type of the class:

Object as Class

This is equivalent to the following statements:

If Object=Nil then
Result:=Nil
else if Object is Class then
Result:=Class(Object)
else
Raise Exception.Create(SErrInvalidTypeCast);

Note that if the object is nil, the as operator does not generate an exception.

The following are some examples of the use of the as operator:

Var
C : TComponent;
O : TObject;
begin
(C as TEdit).Text:=’Some text’;
C:=O as TComponent;
end;

The as and is operators also work on COM interfaces. They can be used to check whether an interface also implements another interface as in the following example:

{$mode objfpc}
uses
SysUtils;
type
IMyInterface1 = interface
[’{DD70E7BB-51E8-45C3-8CE8-5F5188E19255}’]
procedure Bar;
end;
IMyInterface2 = interface
[’{7E5B86C4-4BC5-40E6-A0DF-D27DBF77BCA0}’]
procedure Foo;
end;
TMyObject = class(TInterfacedObject, IMyInterface1, IMyInterface2)
procedure Bar;
procedure Foo;
end;
procedure TMyObject.Bar;
begin
end;
procedure TMyObject.Foo;
begin
end;
var
i: IMyInterface1;
begin
i := TMyObject.Create;
i.Bar;
Writeln(BoolToStr(i is IMyInterface2, True)); // prints true
Writeln(BoolToStr(i is IDispatch, True)); // prints false
(i as IMyInterface2).Foo;
end.

Additionally, the is operator can be used to check if a class implements an interface, and the varas operator can be used to typecast an interface back to the class:

{$mode objfpc}
var
i: IMyInterface;
begin
i := TMyObject.Create;
Writeln(BoolToStr(i is TMyObject,True)); // prints true
Writeln(BoolToStr(i is TObject,True)); // prints true
Writeln(BoolToStr(i is TAggregatedObject,True)); // prints false
(i as TMyObject).Foo;
end.

Although the interfaces must be COM interfaces, the typecast back to a class will only work if the interface comes from an Object Pascal class. It will not work on interfaces obtained from the system by COM.

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