Last week a (large) customer sent me an email indicating he was experiencing issues when compiling the same project on different machines. Turned out the difference was in the source code files format and the root cause was a unit saved as UTF-8 but without a BOM. One of the developers is using Visual Studio Code. And the solution is a changing that or using compiler flag. But before I get to the solution, let me show you the problem with a very simple test case.

• Delphi Compiler Options
• Delphi Compiler Defines
• Delphi Compiler Switches Download

Delphi Compiler Options

Delphi Compiler Defines

Delphi Compiler Switches Download

Delphi and Source Files Encoding To test the scenario, we (it was one of the architects who came up with the simple scenario) created a simple VCL application with code like the following: var strEuro: String = 'Euro=€'; procedure TForm16.Button1Click(Sender: TObject); begin Button1.Caption:= 'Hello ' + strEuro; end; By default, the editor in the Delphi IDE uses ANSI encoding, and everything works fine. You can use the editor context menu, pick the File Format submenu, select UTF8 (I know, missing -), and everything keeps working as expected. Notice, though the length in bytes of the string changes, as you need multiple bytes to represent the Euro symbol in UTF-8. Enter Visual Studio Code While many modern editors use UTF-8 as their standard file format, a nice option we are considering to default to also in RAD Studio, Visual Studio Code (or VSC) is one of the few that prefers using UTF-8 with no BOM.