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8.1.7 Alive and dead objects

Common VCL objects are alive objects – there are allocated dynamically on the heap and they can be used in all ways. Alive objects are created by functions that have the _new suffix. Apart from alive objects, there are dead objects. They are allocated on the stack (using functions with the _init suffix) and they can be used only under special circumstances (explicitly specified in the documentation). In spite of the fact that a dead object supports a certain interface, there are often misimplemented non-needed methods of that interface (methods that are not needed in some specific ways of treatment allowed for dead objects).