Alex Tweedly wrote:
> Never mind objects; we could restate it as .... "LC has no way to
> handle lists of arbitrary chunks of data".
>
> Your phrase " ... simple matter of ... return-delimited chunk ..."
> hides the the real issue:
> what if the chunks of data might contain 'return's ?
For ISO-8859-1 data I've replace in-data tabs with 0x04 and in-data
returns with 0x11, the same format Filemaker uses for its Merge exports.
Obviously this isn't quite as simple with Unicode, but even then we're
left with a similar if not larger problem: if a tab is 0x09, what is a
Unicode tab?
I suspect that when dealing with delimited text the engine can figure
out what it needs to make chunk expressions work.
> You can find another character which is less likely (!!?) - but that
> doesn't give you "arbitrary data".
There's the thing, the reason for my admitted need for coffee: in my
simple world I have no requirement for working with lists of arbitrary
data. When I need to work with arbitrary data I use arrays, and for
things that lend themselves to chunk expressions I use chunk expressions.
Peter's original problem statement was:
LiveCode chunking is great for handling lists but, as far
as I can tell, is missing forward and backward navigation
through lists. I decided to write a few simple functions
to come up with such a mechanism.
For that I would use a pointer into the list to keep track of the
concept of a "current" record, making forward and backward navigation
somewhat straightforward. And given that the data was described as
being a string list, my inclination would be to leave it that way.
I was unable to find where he mentioned "arbitrary data"; it seemed he
was working with things chunk expressions handle well, as he described.
--
Richard Gaskin
Fourth World Systems
Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
____________________________________________________________________
ambassa...@fourthworld.com http://www.FourthWorld.com
_______________________________________________
use-livecode mailing list
use-livecode@lists.runrev.com
Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription
preferences:
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
