At 8:55 AM -0700 6/28/07, Stockly, Ed wrote:
> >>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
And this fails:
class of alias ((path to startup disk as text) & "this file does not exist")
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