David Heffernan

Index out of range error. Stack overflow. Invalid operation. Is that how this works?

So make the necessary changes. Or hire a programmer.

I can't make any sense of what you are asking here.

Perhaps the bug is in some other code in the user's program. One of the recurring themes with questions like this is that the asker often doesn't know how to use, or even realise the value, of the debugger. Re-writing the code for them doesn't help them learn that.

Do you understand what the error message tells you? You are using an index i outside the range 0 to Count-1. You can use your debugger to find out which indexing operation is out if bounds. Debugging by looking at code can be quite hard. Delphi has a powerful debugger for such moments.

Do you know this?

The reason I asked for a minimal reproduction is that by making one, and making it minimal, you'd have learnt a good debugging technique. Instead you posted loads of spurious code. But the act of curltting it down to a minimal reproduction would have led you to the error. Then again, the compiler told you which line the error was on and somehow you missed that information.

Can you make a minimal reproduction and post it here as formatted code rather than screenshots.

What proportion of the overall time your program takes for the task, is the operation you are trying to optimise in this thread?

You aren't. The code in @corneliusdavid post is what you should do.

No I don't think so. Follow the actual rules. When you create an instance, destroy it in the same context that you created it.

I think Arnaud's synopse library has a bunch of more optimised mem copy routines

You will only consider graduates with computing degrees? Seems like that would rule out a lot of good candidates.

Interlocked is always going to be terrible here. Local accumulation, join, and then a final summation would be better. A magic parallel=true flag is fanciful. Why look at Python. Surely look at the various C++ compilers?

The value of the summation an be evaluated statically. I don't think any compilers do this, but I could be wrong.

A really good compiler would remove the loop and just turn it into a simple assignment

The familiar refrain, but the message has not landed yet

TIniFile uses deprecated Windows APIs that haven't been safe to use since 32 bit Windows was release nearly 30 years ago. So yeah use TMemIniFile which has a native Delphi INI parser that won't cause you such trouble. Never ever use TIniFile is the rule here.

I think I'd write a custom dict for this.

I don't think any amount of care can solve the issues there

I'm so excited about this feature

Found and reported load of bugs that haven't been fixed and aren't in the public QP.

Can you just look at the RTL source code and work it out?

https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/Libraries/Alexandria/en/System.StrUtils.SearchBuf Suggests it is now in the AnsiStrings unit.

Windows and Delphi must be the wrong tool for this task. There was a time when you didn't know Delphi. You learnt it. Is it so hard to imagine learning again?