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Re: String to multiple-item list coercion
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Re: String to multiple-item list coercion


  • Subject: Re: String to multiple-item list coercion
  • From: Steven Angier <email@hidden>
  • Date: Sat, 21 Sep 2002 11:23:16 +1000

On 21/9/02 7:56 AM, "has" <email@hidden> wrote:

> Steven Angier wrote:
>
>> I may choose to live under a nice cosy rock, but I just learned that
>> strings can be coerced to multiple-item lists:
>>
>> set {a, b, c, d, e} to "abcdefgh"
>> return {a, b, c, d, e}
>> --> {"a", "b", "c", "d", "e"}
>
> This isn't a coercion, it's a multiple assignment. Comparable to:
>
> set {a, b, c, d, e} to {"a", "b", "c", "d", "e", "f", "g", "h"}

No, it's a coercion, THEN a multiple assignment. (How do you suppose you got
an a list of characters to assign in the first place?)


>> Similarly, one can now query a particular item of a string:
>>
>> item 5 of "abcdefgh"
>> --> "e"
>
> Again, not a new behaviour. Not too dissimilar to 'character 5 of
> "abcdefgh"'. Both strings and lists are composite [multi-item] objects.
> Think of a string as an array of characters

C forces me to think of strings as arrays of char, which I abhor.
Fortunately, AppleScript (and Cocoa with its NSString class) abstracts that
ugliness away -- or at least it is supposed to.


> - I think it makes sense for
> string and list types to display some behaviours in common. For example,
> consider:
>
> repeat with aChar in aString
> ...
> end repeat

This is another example of the same bug (assuming that aString is a string).



>> The ASLG (v1.3.7) indicates that this shouldn't work.
>
> Does it mention it at all? (I could see 'characters of...', etc. described,
> but I only had a quick flick-through. Did I miss something specific?)

Page 83 of the ASLG (v1.3.7) states "AppleScript also supports
coercion of a string to a single-item list...". Also, the coercion matrix on
page 364 indicates that strings cannot be coerced into multiple-item lists.


Steven Angier
Macscript.com
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  • Follow-Ups:
    • Re: String to multiple-item list coercion
      • From: Michael Terry <email@hidden>
References: 
 >Re: String to multiple-item list coercion (From: has <email@hidden>)

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