If a scripter really wants to get a disk name from "list disks" and
then use it with Finder, I merely suggest being explicit about it:
[..."eject disk foo" vs "eject foo"...]
On Oct 18, 2005, at 8:08 PM, John C. Welch wrote:
Well, to the casual scripter, they are. High level language. They
expect the Finder to be smart enough to look for something that can
be ejected with that name and eject it. If you aren't a programmer
or a geek, it's perfectly logical.
But there are limits to what the system can infer:
tell application "Finder"
every item of disk "BLAH"
--> { ...a list of the items, as expected... }
every item of "BLAH"
--> { "B", "L", "A", "H" } -- doesn't even run any Finder code
end tell
In a narrow context like "eject <something>" I agree that it's nice
for Finder to figure out that you mean a disk, but I would recommend
scripters use Finder objects whenever it makes sense, because once
you get into the habit of using "just a string" where you could use a
richer object, you'll run into cases like the above.
Another example (which I admit to tripping over more than once,
before my fingers learned better):
tell "Finder" to get item 1
--> "F"
tell application "Finder" to get item 1
--> startup disk of application "Finder"
AppleScript might be able to figure out, sometimes, that I meant to
tell an application something, rather than a string. But it
couldn't tell in every case, so it would be unreliable.
Maybe the error messages could be improved, though:
tell "Finder" to make new folder
--> Alert:
AppleScript Error
"Finder" doesn't understand the make message.
Perhaps it could offer a guess:
--> Alert: The string "Finder" doesn't understand the make
message. Perhaps you meant 'application "Finder"'.
Do others trip over this? I'll file it in Radar if someone thinks
it's worthy.
