storing a stack as a customprop

[Peter Brigham MD]

I'm stuck. I swear I got this to work for a few minutes and now it  
isn't working. I changed something and broke it.

I'm trying to store a stack ("stackToSave") as a customproperty of a  
stack called "updateList". As far as I can tell the way to store a  
currently open stack in a property is to first save it to disk and use  
something like

set the storedStack of stack "updateList" to URL "file:" & filepath

First question: is this the way to approach this task?

If so, then a few more details: the stack "stackToSave" is a substack  
of a stack "myMainStack" currently open in the IDE (all of this is  
taking place in the IDE). The stack "updateList" is not part of the  
same stackfile. I'm thinking I have to clone the stack "stackToSave"  
first so I can save it independently. Second question: is this true?

I have a script in the stack "updateList" that calls a handler  
"storeStack":

...
put "stackToSave" into stName
storeStack stName
...

on storeStack s
    clone invisible stack s
    -- when I do a clone stack s (without the invisible)
    -- I can see the cloned stack open fine and it's
    -- listed in the Application Browser as
    -- "Copy of stackToSave"
    put the filename of stack "myMainStack" into filePath
    set the itemdelimiter to "/"
    put s & ".rev" into item -1 of filePath
    put "Copy of" && s into sName
    save stack sName as filePath
    -- breakpoint
    -- when I break here and look in the Finder I see
    -- that the stack is indeed saved successfully
    put url "file:" & filePath into stackData
    set the storedstack[s] of stack "updateList" to stackData
    save stack "updateList"
    delete file filePath
    close stack sName
end storeStack

However, the result of this is that the contents of the property <the  
storedStack["stackToSave"] of stack "updateList"> is simply the  
filepath of the saved cloned stack. Clearly I'm not actually getting  
the stack itself into the property.

I'm using a custompropertyset because I will eventually be storing  
several stacks at a time in the updateList stack.

Is there some wrinkle here I don't get? I'm using a MacBook, OSX  
10.5.8, Rev Studio 3.5.0-gm-2, build 870.

-- Peter

Peter M. Brigham
pmbrig at gmail.com
http://home.comcast.net/~pmbrig