David Heffernan

No. It is not possible to read an excel file without opening it. However, I suspect that what you actually want to do is to read such a file without using an Excel process via its COM API. If that is what you want to do then it is indeed possible.

If there are faster asm versions in the system unit, that work on x64, then they will be used. But you can't compile an x86 asm procedure in x64 and expect it to work. You need a bespoke x64 version. In other words, I don't think what you describe is going to be possible. What is your specific performance issue?

My user is administrator, but because of UAC I run by default with restricted rights, as a standard user. Only if necessary do I run a process elevated. Do you have UAC disabled?

Why? We stopped doing that when Vista came out.

difficult to reconcile these two snippets

Did you submit a PR for these changes?

Did you submit a PR for these changes?

These sort of shitty posts are precisely why SO ask these questions.

I guess you should just hire a programmer to do the work for you, if you don't know where to start. You already suggested this. Do a kickstarter or similar.

I presume that they are concerned that their community isn't discriminating against any particular groups of people.

It's just a lexicographic order. If the primary comparison is equal, move on to the secondary etc until you separate the teams.

Delphi can access all Windows APIs and the best reference is MSDN.

Er, yes, that's what I meant to type

Isn't it ExtractFileName(ExtractFileDir(ExeName))

Does this happen with a brand new VCL app with a single form that does nothing? If not then the answer is specific to your code.

This should not be necessary. It also seems like there would be scenarios which this would stop the user doing things they want to do.

Why would you try to put these two together. You use TortoiseGit inside explorer surely.

I also owner draw into a status bar panel for this need. It's pretty straightforward.

No they don't. I'm talking about actual statisticians as in a branch of mathematics.

It just seems so weird to me that there is such a thing as a Delphi developer. Are companies really not prepared to teach people? How can it be harder to learn a new language than to learn a new code base? Nothing here computes to me.

Bug in your code. Show a minimal reproduction.

As an aside what annoys me about image lists in Delphi is that they lump all images in one big dfm blob. I like to keep my icons in icon files and link them as a resource. Then load them up at runtime. It means that when you need to update one you just change the ico file in one place. But then you don't get to see icons at design time. I'd like to have my icons in resources and see them at design time. Such a system must be possible.

Multithreading in Python is inevitably blocked by the GIL. Nothing you can do about it. No magic solution. See countless discussions of this topic on the broader internet. In other words the issue is not related to Delphi or p4d but is a fundamental design choice in Python.

This question is the one that drives statisticians around the world completely mad. You need to decide on your goals before deciding what data to collect.

Why return a pointer to self? You just risk having that pointer outlive the record instance. Make this a constructor or a static class function that returns a new instance. BTW I remembered wrongly before. No need for a helper to implement a static class function that returns rTxt.