David Heffernan

Even if you don't use a debugger, get your program to print out the intermediate values in the function square. Then compare it to your expectation.

Read the section on index specifiers https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Sydney/en/Properties_(Delphi)

What actual problem does this cause? How does this affect what you do?

I personally want my program to run on Wine. Seems like Crowdstrike is the problem. Do you sign your executables?

No, they are fundamentally different things in terms of implementation.

You might want to start with a beginners book to learn C++ that will take you through all of this learning. And you definitely don't want to be using character arrays when strings exist.

Your job is to gradually remove code from your app until the behaviour is the same as a simple example. Good luck.

Probably the benchmark code is not telling you anything useful

Imagine we are starting at the beginning of this post. What are we to make of what is in this page alone?

Remove packed and it's probably alright.

The OP

Recurring theme here is that you think that everything else is at fault when you can't achieve things that others can. Perhaps you need the curiosity to ask why this is.

Doesn't always exit with a Break

I actually don't know how that is interpreted by the compiler

This is a really good point, and very nicely expressed. Essentially the whole thing boils down to Delphi literals having ambiguity of type. Sets and arrays use the same syntax. For integers, what type is 1, how can I make sure that it is signed or unsigned, 8 bit, 16 bit etc. And 1.0, is that single or double? Why can't I state this explicitly. Other languages have these facilities, Delphi lags behind in this area.