The particular line I gave up on was " Flesch Index: 93.1/100"
what I want to get out is the 93.1 and assign it to a local variable called Flesch. later lines like to do things in a completly different way such as: " 9 words, average length 3.89 characters = 1.00 syllables" 2008/7/7 Alexander Burger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Hi Konrad, > > thanks for the long explanation. > > >> this. when ever it prints a list it checks to see if it might be a >> string by inspecting the first n bytes (I don't know how many) if they >> are all printable ascii cahracters then it prints the list as a > > That's quite a kludge, IMHO. > > >> delimiter is allready taken, and there is no alternative. so I can't >> easily write an unpacked string in source. > > This is not difficult when you use the backquote read macro: > > : (de foo () > (let S '`(chop "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz") > (prinl (reverse S)) > (length S) ) ) > -> foo > > : (foo) > zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcba > -> 26 > > >> What I'm saying is that there may be a case to say that treating >> strings as lists by default may be better then treating them as > > Perhaps. But this is also a matter of efficiency: A list of single > characters takes up four times the space (and even eight times on > 64bits) compared to the packed symbol representation. > > PicoLisp tries not to be overly clever. A list should be a list, and a > symbol should be a symbol, under all circumstances. What you see is what > you get. When you start to print things differently depending on the > context, you'll just create confusion. > > >> transient strings by default, especially as the transietn symbol names >> are stored as lists under the hood anyway. > > Well, they are stored in cells, but not as lists of individual > characters. > > >> the documentation states somewhere that decision to treat strings as >> transient symbols may have been missguided. > > If I recall correctly, the opposite was meant: That transient symbols > (which are an essential feature of the language) look syntactically like > strings in other languages. > > In earlier versions of PicoLisp, transient symbols had another syntax > (i.e. :Var instead of "Var"). But then you cannot easily write transient > symbols with white space in the name etc., and you effectively lose the > ability to use transient symbols *like* strings in other languages. > > >> Once Strings are just lists all of the normal list processing >> functions can be appleid to them, and special characters can then be > > Yes, this is an important feature, and also used frequently in PicoLisp. > It is easily achieved with (line), (chop) etc. But more important is > that real transient symbols also have a value cell and a property list. > This makes it possible to do things with "strings" which are not > possible in other languages. > > For example, the whole locale translation mechanisms depend on the fact > that "strings" contain their current translation in the value cell. With > that, (prinl "house") will result in, for example, "Haus" if the locale > is German. > > >> given standard representations. The need to find out what the control >> sequences for things like tab and new line was also a stumbling block >> as they are not as intuitive as the '/' escapes used by most other >> programming languages. > > You are free do define e.g. > > : (setq "\n" "^J" "\r" "^M" "\t" "^I") > > (in the same transient scope, of course) > > >> the precision of numbers varies between lines. This last part of >> actually parsing the numbers and getting them treated as numbers is >> where I got up to before giving up. > > How did you try this? Should be no problem with the 'format' function, > where you can pass precision and separator values. > > Cheers, > - Alex > -- > UNSUBSCRIBE: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > -- UNSUBSCRIBE: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
