Externals Under 2.7.x

[Mark Wieder]

Trevor-

Friday, February 9, 2007, 8:28:11 PM, you wrote:

> Interesting article Mark.  I wasn't aware that the result was set
> when calling functions.

Nor was I until I started investigating this. And trying to figure out
error reporting from externals was what get me into it.

> As for storing your result in the "it" variable, one potential issue
> I see (if I am understanding correctly) is that functions defined in
> an external would have different basic behavior than functions  
> defined in Revolution (Transcript).  Any function defined in an  
> external would have to be called like this in order to work properly:

> put getTheNumberFour() into theError
> answer it -- CONTAINS THE NUMBER "4"

> because if the user called the external function like this:

> get getTheNumberFour()

> then both "it" and "the result" would contain the error message.   
> Plus you would lose the ability to put result of the function into a
> meaning variable name without adding another assignment (i.e. put it
> into theMeaningVariableName).

Actually that's the way functions work. The internal db and xml
handlers return a value to you and you have to check the result to see
if it (trying to refer to these natural language syntax values is
getting a bit difficult) to see if it contains "revxml err" or
something like that.

-- 
-Mark Wieder
 mwieder at ahsoftware.net