Re: compactness of expression question
Re: compactness of expression question
- Subject: Re: compactness of expression question
- From: billp <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 18:20:46 -0600
Hi Scott,
Even though I am fairly novice at applescript, I consider my
code reasonably compact. My problem is that Microsoft Word
is much better controlled with (very bulky) calls to VB. I have
used handlers to streamline redundancy where possible in the
lengthy "do visual basic" routines, but I have to call so many
different ones, and some just once, that they do add up to create
a bulky file. If only MS would make Word's AS dictionary work
as advertised, A lot of verbosity could be purged.
I have used suggestions from this board to learn quite a lot
regarding better programming, and I'm sure that I could make things
tighter. But on this project, I doubt it could be THAT much
better.
Bill Planey
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Ah, a chance to toss out one of my favorite programming aphorisms.
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More computing sins are committed in the name of
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efficiency (without necessarily achieving it) than
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for any other single reason--including blind stupidity.
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--William A. Wulf, "A Case Against the GOTO,"
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Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth National ACM Conference, 1972.
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So how to improve? If your script is getting too big, and its got lots of
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globals, the problem probably isn't the code, but the data structures you are
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using. Code tweeking can only make marginal improvements, but using a proper
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data structure can make the script smaller, faster, and easier to
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understand all
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at once.
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And consider, a global variable costs less than 0.01 cents ( or 0.1
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milliEuros)
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s