Cloning oddity

[Richard Gaskin]

Thomas McGrath III wrote:

> On Jan 24, 2004, at 3:22 PM, David Squance wrote:
>> I have a script which stops on one step which involves cloning a card.
>> There's no error message.  The same script works fine to a certain
>> point, cloning other cards, but when it reaches a certain one, won't
>> go any further.  The standalone (OS X, same as development) works fine.
>> I tried running it in the IDE with suppressing (or is it suspending)
>> the development environment, but I had to force quit Rev.  Any suggestions?
>>
> I had a situation where I cloned 100 stacks into substacks of the main
> stack. On a certain number the Rev IDE would freeze up. I had to force
> quit. My situation was that each clone was a number letter combo ie "13i"
> and "13ii" etc.
> It so happened that the clone it stopped on was one without any letters
> in it. ie. "17" no "i" etc.
> Also, the stack became corrupted/sick and I could not delete the
> trouble clone. I had to go back to a saved version and try again.

If I recall correctly, no corruption took place:  the numeric naming made
the file difficult to work with, but Rev did not report the file as
corrupted and nothing in the file format was broken.  A recipe was provided
to change the names back to valid forms without requiring a backup, along
with an explanation of what happened and how to avoid it:

<http://lists.runrev.com/pipermail/use-revolution/2003-December/027697.html>

After years of experiencing corruption in tools like HyperCard and FileMaker
I can understand the tendency to apply that label to any unexpected
behavior.

An explanation of what corruption is and why it's extremely rare in
Revolution is at 
<http://lists.runrev.com/pipermail/use-revolution/2003-December/027137.html>
.

This distinction about corruption is not about any sort of pride in Rev or
saying it's necessarily better or worse than any system more prone to
corruption.  

This distinction is important for diagnosing and solving practical
challenges:  true corruption exhibits specific behaviors and requires
specific, often arduous, remedies.  If something unexpected occurs that is
not corruption but is labelled as such, the opportunity to identify the true
cause of the problem is lost, and the often simpler remedy never discovered.

-- 
 Richard Gaskin 
 Fourth World Media Corporation
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