Mark Wieder wrote:
"1,2,3" -- this contains three items
"1,2,3," -- this contains three items
"1,2,3, " -- this contains four items
Let's look at those strings from the point of view of what we might
presume was that of the HyperTalk design team, but besting them by using
Jacque's suggestion of the more appropriate "terminator" rather than the
ambiguous "delimiter" - here we'll use "x" for any data that isn't a
terminator, and "|" for "terminator:
x|x|x -- this contains three items
x|x|x| -- this contains three items
x|x|x|x -- this contains four items
Once we understand that delimiters are actually terminators, even empty
items become easily graspable:
x|<empty>|x|x - this contains four items
...because what we're counting is any chunk that's terminated, either by
the delimiter or by simply being the end of the string, even those
elements whose value is empty.
One simple solution would be to add "lineTerminator" and
"itemTerminator" as synonyms for "lineDelimiter" and "itemDelimiter"
respectively, and then the conceptual model fits what the engine does.
We leave the "*delimter" tokens in place for us ol' timers, but
emphasize "*terminator" for newcomers.
A more complex solution was hinted at in a recent post by Klaus in the
forum thread on this, in which apparently Mark Waddingham has been
giving this a good deal of thought and has come up with a solution that
obviates the issue altogether by introducing true lists, rather than
just delimited strings, so there are no delimiter characters per se. I
believe Lingo is one xTalk derivative that supported true lists, and
many other VHLLs offer them too.
Personally, I'd like to see both implemented, as each can be very useful
for different tasks.
If we get both of those (more accurately descriptive tokens and true
lists), once folks get a chance to use them we can then evaluate the
usefulness of bifurcating the community code base along the lines of
those handlers which expect traditional terminators and those which use
the new delimiter behavior dependent on a global setting. But I'd wager
that if we had both very few scripters would be motivated to pursue this
further. :)
--
Richard Gaskin
Fourth World
LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/FourthWorldSys
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