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Re: A reference to
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Re: A reference to


  • Subject: Re: A reference to
  • From: David Durkee <email@hidden>
  • Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2003 20:13:19 -0500

On Friday, August 8, 2003, at 05:07 PM, Doug McNutt wrote:

I want to elicit an erudite discussion of the English-like phrase "a reference to" in AppleScript.

The subject application is Eudora but the defining document is the AppleScript Language Guide.

I hereby declare that the terms "pointer" and "handle" which are well defined in the (classic) Mac OS shall be legitimate words in the ensuing discussion in spite of the fact that they are obviously deprecated in the "user-oriented-objects-required" world of AppleScript.


When a posting contains this:

There is a problem with message length.
<T> means tell application "Eudora"
</T> means end tell

You know you're in trouble.

My understanding of "a reference to" is that is useful when you want to store an object reference of something that normally returns data. For example,

text selection of document 1

will probably return the text of the selection. If what you really wanted was an object reference to the selection, prefacing it with "a reference to" will get you that. This would allow you to get other properties of the object, which just the text would not.

A reference in AppleScript has nothing to do with a handle or a pointer, other than a metaphorical similarity. It is a much higher level thing than that.

David
--
David Durkee
email@hidden
<http://ddurkee.homeip.net/>
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References: 
 >A reference to (From: Doug McNutt <email@hidden>)

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