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StringToTokenAllowBlank

Function StringToTokenAllowBlank( S : string; aSeparators : TvxSeparators) : TStringList

Example​

procedure ScriptEvent(var Value: variant);
var
  Tokens: TStringList;
begin
  Tokens := StringToTokenAllowBlank('A||B|', ['|']);
  try
    Value := Tokens.Count; // 4: A, blank, B, blank
  finally
    Tokens.Free;
  end;
end;

Usage​

StringToTokenAllowBlank creates a caller-owned TStringList that preserves leading, trailing and consecutive blank fields for non-empty input.

Ownership

The returned TStringList is newly allocated and caller-owned. Always free it after use. Empty source still returns a live allocated list, but its early exit leaves Count = 0 rather than adding one blank token.

Token rules

  • Leading separators produce leading blank entries.
  • Consecutive separators produce blank entries between them.
  • A trailing separator produces a trailing blank entry.
  • Any character in aSeparators is a delimiter; the exact delimiter is not retained.
  • With an empty separator set and non-empty source, the list contains the complete source as one token.
  • No token is trimmed, unescaped or normalised.

Additional Technical Info​

StringToTokenAllowBlank creates a token at every separator boundary and adds the final token after scanning. For every non-empty source, the result count is the number of separator characters encountered plus one.

The example is fictional and source-reviewed only.

Performance and concurrency

The source is scanned once, with per-character token concatenation and one list append per field. The returned list is not automatically thread-safe.

Related entries

Created 2026-07-15