Pascal Object: how to do a typed forward declaration?

I'm translating the great fmod C header to Pascal, and I'm stuck because of a forward declaration. If I declare the function before the type, the error is "FMOD_CODEC_STATE: unknown", and if I declare the FMOD_CODEC_STATE before the function, the error is "FMOD_CODEC_METADATACALLBACK: unknown" Any idea how I could solve this problem? Thank you very much !

type
  FMOD_CODEC_STATE = Record
    numsubsounds: Integer;
    waveformat: array[0..0] of FMOD_CODEC_WAVEFORMAT;
    plugindata: Pointer;

    filehandle: Pointer;
    filesize: Cardinal;
    fileread: FMOD_FILE_READCALLBACK;
    fileseek: FMOD_FILE_SEEKCALLBACK;
    metadata: FMOD_CODEC_METADATACALLBACK;
  end;
  FMOD_CODEC_METADATACALLBACK    = function (codec_state: FMOD_CODEC_STATE; tagtype: FMOD_TAGTYPE; name: PChar; data:开发者_StackOverflow Pointer; datalen: Cardinal; datatype: FMOD_TAGDATATYPE; unique: Integer):FMOD_RESULT;

The record doesn't need to be passed by value. In fact, the original C code doesn't pass it by value anyway. It's passed by reference, with a pointer. Declare the pointer, then the function, and then the record:

type
  PFMOD_CODEC_STATE = ^FMOD_CODEC_STATE;
  FMOD_CODEC_METADATACALLBACK = function (codec_state: PFMOD_CODEC_STATE; tagtype: FMOD_TAGTYPE; name: PChar; data: Pointer; datalen: Cardinal; datatype: FMOD_TAGDATATYPE; unique: Integer):FMOD_RESULT;
  FMOD_CODEC_STATE = Record
    numsubsounds: Integer;
    waveformat: PFMOD_CODEC_WAVEFORMAT;
    plugindata: Pointer;

    filehandle: Pointer;
    filesize: Cardinal;
    fileread: FMOD_FILE_READCALLBACK;
    fileseek: FMOD_FILE_SEEKCALLBACK;
    metadata: FMOD_CODEC_METADATACALLBACK;
  end;

Yes, you're allowed to declare a pointer to something before you've declared the thing it points to. You're not allowed to forward-declare records, though, so the order given above is the only possible order for those three declarations.

Pascal has automatic forward type declaration for pointer classes, which is what I'm assuming that function actually takes. So simply changing your declarations to something like this (warning, I haven't used pascal in over 12 years) should work:

type
  PFMOD_CODEC_STATE=^FMOD_CODEC_STATE;
  FMOD_CODEC_METADATACALLBACK    = function (codec_state: PFMOD_CODEC_STATE; tagtype: FMOD_TAGTYPE; name: PChar; data: Pointer; datalen: Cardinal; datatype: FMOD_TAGDATATYPE; unique: Integer):FMOD_RESULT;

  FMOD_CODEC_STATE = Record
    numsubsounds: Integer;
    waveformat: array[0..0] of FMOD_CODEC_WAVEFORMAT;
    plugindata: Pointer;

    filehandle: Pointer;
    filesize: Cardinal;
    fileread: FMOD_FILE_READCALLBACK;
    fileseek: FMOD_FILE_SEEKCALLBACK;
    metadata: FMOD_CODEC_METADATACALLBACK;
  end;