Re: TIDs case insensitive?
Re: TIDs case insensitive?
- Subject: Re: TIDs case insensitive?
- From: Shane Stanley <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 12:38:49 +1100
On 9/3/01 11:32 AM +1000, Chris Nebel, email@hidden, wrote:
>
Shane Stanley wrote:
>
>
> Wouldn't it be preferable to just set the default to the way it is? That
>
> might save you a lot of email in the long run ;-)
>
>
Good thought, but unfortunately the default for all other string operations is
>
to ignore case, so your suggestion would introduce a different inconsistency.
There's precedent, though. For example, choose from list returns a different
result when the cancel button is hit compared to all the other dialogs,
presumably because that's what it always did.
And TIDs are likely to remain a special case anyway, unless you support all
the other attributes that can be considered in string comparisons. That
would mean supporting things like:
ignoring punctuation
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {"x,y"}
end ignoring
(which I like the thought of...)
But you're never going to get consider/ignore case fully consistent until
you can somehow force support of it in apps. The distinction of it applying
to all "string operations" is a programmer's nicety that's going to be lost
on a lot of scripters who know that
tell application "Finder"
considering case
every file of alias "Macintosh HD:" whose name ends with ".PDF"
end considering
end tell
will still ignore the considering statement, and so in their minds the whole
business is inconsistent anyway.
>
I'm betting that letter-based delimiters are rare enough that we can take the
>
hit, but it's at least a release or two away in any case.
Maybe I'm doing odd things, but in my case the ratio would probably be at
least 5:1, and probably more than 10:1, the other way. This is because of
the issue raised by Arthur -- it's our universal string manipulation tool,
and we have to use it in all sorts of situations.
Your proposed change would probably break a high percentage of my scripts,
so you have me scared :-(
--
Shane Stanley, email@hidden