Paul, thanks for a script that I didn't think I needed until you made it.
It's awesome!
//k
On 10/25/04 12:01 PM, "Bryan Harris" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
> Thanks, Paul -- for the lesson and for the fix!
>
> Chastisement taken, too. I guess I should quell your fears at least a
> little -- this particular script was heavily borrowed from elsewhere, I just
> tweaked the output. I do know about ATIDS, I was just unaware that they
> only stick while the application that ran them is still running. And I
> didn't know the part about the concatenation to lists vs. strings part. I
> had no idea on that one, thanks.
>
> I must admit that I've become much more fond of perl in the last couple
> years and grown more annoyed with AS, for this very reason! I did try to
> build this script, but I couldn't get what I wanted from it in a reasonable
> amount of time. Why is "&" able to return lists *and* strings? Where is it
> documented that you can request the month of a date as an integer? The
> month of the current date is "October", how does AS coerce that into an
> integer? More generally, unreliable globals, properties that don't always
> stick, and English-like syntax that usually isn't, make AS pretty difficult
> when perl is available. Of course none of this is your fault -- just a
> source of frustration for me.
>
> Thanks again.
>
> - Bryan
>
>
>
>> You've recently run a script that set AppleScript text item delimiters to
>> {return}, and your own script does not set them to {""} before coercing a
>> list to text ('as string'). That is a VERY big no-no. Never omit that.
>>
>> This script is simply full of careless things that show a lack of
>> understanding of AppleScript. I'm afraid.
>>
>> This actually proves the point that you can never trust others to reset
>> delimiters so you should always, always set them to what you want before
>> coercing a list to string or Unicode text.
>>
>> AppleScript's text item delimiters are global across the application running
>> the script(s), until you quit and relaunch it. In the case of scripts run
>> from the Entourage script menu, that means Entourage itself. So running a
>> script form the Script menu which sets tids to {return} will leave them that
>> way for all other scripts run from the menu until you quit and relaunch.
>> Therefore it's polite to always reset them to {""} - or to what they were.
>> And it's essential to set your own before coercing lists to strings.
>>
>> Now you may think you're not using a list anywhere. But you are.
>>
>> You have the line:
>>
>> if mo < 10 then copy "0" & mo as string to mo
>>
>> OK, what happens when mo � 10? Nothing - it remains an integer - you have
>> not coerced it to string. Then later, when you have:
>>
>>
>> copy (mo & "/" & da & "/" & yr as text) to theTxt
>>
>>
>> The first element (mo) is integer and the rest of the items, beginning with
>> "/", are strings. You can always begin a concatenation expression with a
>> string followed by an integer, e.g.
>>
>> "/" & 10
>> --> "/10"
>>
>>
>> since the integer will get coerced implicitly to the class on the left
>> (string) , since it _can_ be. But when you write
>>
>> 10 & "/"
>> --> {10, "/"}
>>
>> you get a list, since the item on the right cannot be implicitly coerced to
>> an integer. All this is in the AppleScript Language Guide. Thus, on today's
>> date
>>
>> (mo & "/" & da & "/" & yr )
>> --> {10, "/", 24, "/", "04"}
>>
>> There's your list. Since you have tids set to {return} when you then coerce
>> this list - at last - to text, you get:
>>
>> copy (mo & "/" & da & "/" & yr as text) to theTxt
>> -->"10
>> /
>> 24
>> /
>> 04"
>>
>>
>>
>> tell application "Microsoft Entourage"
>>
>> set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {""}
>> copy ((offset of (the month of (current date)) in �
>> "jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov dec ") + 3) / 4 �
>> as integer to mo
>> if mo < 10 then copy "0" & mo as string to mo
>> copy day of (current date) to da
>> copy text 3 thru 4 of (get year of (current date) as text) to yr
>> if (day of (current date) < 10) then copy "0" & da as string to da
>>
>> copy (mo & "/" & da & "/" & yr as text) to theTxt
>>
>> try
>> set selection to theTxt
>> on error
>> display dialog "This script can only insert into the body of a message"�
>> buttons {"OK"} default button 1 with icon stop
>> end try
>>
>> end tell
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ( By the way, all this 'copy' stuff is bad practice too. It doesn't matter
>> in this script, but when repeated many times will make your scripts slower
>> and eat up memory. 'copy' makes a new copy every time. Expect in the cases
>> of lists, records and dates where you do not want to share data (they're
>> mutable), always use 'set' instead of copy. 'copy day of current date to da'
>> is the only line that needs 'copy'. And why is any of this - aside from 'set
>> selection to theTxt' - in an Entourage tell block anyway?
>> )
>>
>> On top of all this, in Panther you don't need any of that guff since you can
>> just get the month 'as integer' without offsets. You also keep calling
>> 'currnet date' osax over and over again instaed of setting avariable to it
>> just once. I'd do the script like this:
>>
>>
>> set currDate to (current date)
>> set mo to (month of currDate) as integer
>> set mo to text -2 thru -1 of ("0" & mo) -- string
>> set da to text -2 thru -1 of ("0" & (day of currDate))
>> set yr to (year of currDate as string)
>> set theTxt to (mo & "/" & da & "/" & text 3 thru 4 of yr) --not list
>> tell application "Microsoft Entourage" to set selection to theTxt
>>
>>
>
>
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Kyle DeMilo
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