shilling for my feature request [1926]

[Jeanne A. E. DeVoto]

At 10:27 AM -0700 8/20/2004, Mark Brownell wrote:
>I finally found what I was looking for in the basic core for all my 
>pull-parser needs. With the help of those at Run Rev this was found:
>>So, one idea is to implement a function:
>>   matchGlobal(stringToSearch, token)
>>returning a list of all indices in stringToSearch of token.
>>
>>e.g.
>>   get matchGlobal("<a>foo</a><a>bar</a><a>baz</a>", "<a>")
>>would give
>>   it[1] = 1
>>   it[2] = 10
>>   it[3] = 20

The functionality sounds good, but may I put in a vote for readable 
syntax, instead of this C-like horror? ;-) For example, this one has 
been discussed pretty extensively on the Xtalk list:

   get the offsets of "<a>" in "<a>foo</a><a>bar</a><a>baz</a>"

returning either the array as above (although I'm a bit allergic to 
arrays in cases where they're not absolutely needed - difficult to 
display for debugging, etc.), or, as in most return values, a simple 
comma-delimited list: 1,10,20.

There are some advantages, since "offset" already exists and so 
"offsets" leverages off developer knowledge of that function. The 
syntax is also cleaner than the existing "offset" syntax, which has 
been a rough spot ever since HyperTalk 1.0, so making the obvious 
extension to the offset function might not be a bad idea. This could 
also be extended to word offsets, item offsets, and line offsets 
matching the current "offset" function variants.
-- 
jeanne a. e. devoto ~ revolution at jaedworks.com
http://www.jaedworks.com