Ah, thanks, Brian - re-reading more carefully, I see how the first item in the positionVarsList would provide the offset of the first non-tab character.
Re prettification, I’m trying to create a quick & dirty tool to process a set of comma-delimited query strings - to see their common patterns. They have nested label:value pairs, some of which expand further into arrays of varying depth bounded with curly braces & square brackets but they’re not standards-based JSON HTML or XML, so Coda prettification tools can’t won’t recognise and clean them up for me. It’s (hopefully) a one-off activity, so I’m hoping to get away with quick & dirty text manipulation. I’ve made reasonable progress by iterating through chars but now need to do some post-processing cleanup of the ’tab-nested’ lines - hence the need to count the tab indentations. I try to avoid arrays, as I can’t see the workings! :-D Best, Keith > On 21 Jan 2021, at 15:06, Brian Milby via use-livecode > <use-livecode@lists.runrev.com> wrote: > > Just to clarify my suggestion, it isn’t the return value that you would use > (other than to check for success), but the third variable in the call that > has the position that you would be looking for. > > When you say that you are prettifying... are you doing something to adjust > each tab in the line? If so, split may be useful to chunk the data into an > array. > > And yes, there are many ways to do just about anything. Glad you found > something that works for your situation. > > Sent from my iPhone > >> On Jan 21, 2021, at 9:38 AM, Keith Clarke via use-livecode >> <use-livecode@lists.runrev.com> wrote: >> >> Thanks Brian. I looked at matchChunk in the dictionary & it seems to return >> a boolean, rather than the offset. >> >> Thanks all - I’ve stopped trying to find the syntax for ‘find any char but >> this’ in offset and instead, taken Dick’s advice to iterate through the >> chars and count the loops until char <> tab. :) >> Best, >> Keith >> >>> On 21 Jan 2021, at 14:03, Brian Milby via use-livecode >>> <use-livecode@lists.runrev.com> wrote: >>> >>> You could also use matchChunk with a regular expression that excludes the >>> tab character. >>> >>> Sent from my iPhone >>> >>>>> On Jan 21, 2021, at 7:14 AM, Keith Clarke via use-livecode >>>>> <use-livecode@lists.runrev.com> wrote: >>>> >>>> Ah yes indeed, I’d forgotten I could test with 'put not(tab)’ in the >>>> message box - that certainly proves the syntax was wrong! :-) >>>> Best, >>>> Keith >>>> >>>>>> On 21 Jan 2021, at 10:49, Dick Kriesel via use-livecode >>>>>> <use-livecode@lists.runrev.com> wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>>> On Jan 21, 2021, at 2:34 AM, Keith Clarke via use-livecode >>>>>>> <use-livecode@lists.runrev.com> wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> I was just keen to understand why offset wasn’t happy with the >>>>>> ‘not(tab)’ in this instance. >>>>> >>>>> expression "not(tab)" evaluates to true, which doesn’t serve your purpose >>>>> >>>>> — Dick >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> 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 >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> 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 >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> 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 >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 > > _______________________________________________ > 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 _______________________________________________ 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
