Uli Kusterer wrote:
>The only way we can truly work around this problem is if we allow
>scripter-defined chunk types. But that would make it much more verbose
>again:
>
> define delimiter schomp as "\"
> define delimiter schammel as "|"
> put schomp 5 of schammel 7 of "this\is\different|a\b\c|foo\bar|yeah\?"
>
>as opposed to:
>
> put item 5 delimited by "\" of item 7 delimited by "|" of
>"this\is\different|a\b\c|foo\bar|yeah\?"
If you use delimiter names that are speaking, it would get very readable:
define delimiter pathItem as "/"
define delimiter fileSuffixItem as "."
put the last fileSuffixItem of the last pathItem of theFile into theSuffix
This seems to me even more readable than:
put the last item delimited by "/" of the last item delimited by "."\
of theFile into theSuffix
It would also be easy to expand to regexp delimiter (in the syntax
Uli proposed in another mail):
define delimiter block as "<" & some text & ">"
put block 3 of theString into theBlock
BTW there are two dimensions to expand the term "item" to:
1. Items do not end on a single character, but on several in row:
item 2 by "<br>" of "<brown>some</brown><br>text<br>string"
returns "text"
2. Items that end on any of a set of delimiters:
item 3 by "." or ";" of "this.is,a;test;string"
returns "test"
The first problem can be solved with MetaTalk:
function swap txt,x,y
if y is empty then put "," into y
if x is empty then put return into x
put numToChar(0) into z
replace x with z in txt
replace y with x in txt
replace z with y in txt
return txt
end swap
put swap(item 2 of swap("<brown>some</brown><br>text<br>string","<br>")\
,"<br>") into theResult
Or
repeat for each item x in swap(txt,"<br>")
put swap(x,"<br>") into y
...
It would be easier to read if you could supply multiple character delimiters.
Also the second problem can be solved with MetaTalk:
put "this.is,a;test;string" into txt
replace ";" with "." of txt
put item 3 by "." of txt into theResult
There are uses for both, but there are work arounds, so they should
be not so high on the feature request list. A tree list is by far
more important. And, Scott, if you implement the swap function,
please leave these defaults or you'll break a lot of our code.
Regards!
R�diger
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