>>This does not compile, which is as expected:
>>alias "Dora:this file does not exist"
>>This does compile, but I would have expected it to have the same compile error as the above code:
>> alias (path to startup disk as text) & "this file does not exist"
>>How come?
That's a very clever design. When compiling an alias, the appleScript compiler tries to resolve an alias, and if the item is not present, it returns an error.
However, in order to resolve the alias, the compiler will no execute any script or command.
This allows us to aliases with variables and other commands that don't exist at compile time, but will exist at runtime.
In your example, "path to" is a command (standard editions) and since the compiler doesn't execute command it can't complete the path so it allows the alias to remain unresolved.
It's the same mechanism that allows the following to compile:
set myFile to alias choose file
or
set myFile to chooseFile
alias myFile
HTH
ES
