Interesting wordOffset behavior

[Richard Gaskin]

Peter M. Brigham wrote:

 > Probably Richard Gaskin can tell us the history behind this,
 > clearly a leftover from HC.

No doubt. I got nothing on this one specifically, other than the 
precedence order Alex noted.

While this is a common side-effect of a flexible left-to-right parser, 
easily made more precise with parens, I do find that most of the 
head-scratchers in the language were holdovers from the HyperTalk era. 
For all their reputation of having crafted something remembered as being 
"easy to use", the HyperTalk team's frequent exceptions to their own 
rules have led to years of confusion in every dialect that's adopted them.

My personal favorite example is allowing property syntax for functions 
(e.g., "the acos of <number>" vs. "acos(<number>)"), but LiveCode is not 
without its own unique anomalies, like the "destroyStack" property which 
doesn't actually destroy the stack at all, or the "delete stack" command 
which does two very different things depending on whether it's used on a 
mainStack or a substack.

xTalks are funky this way.  Thankfully they provide enough utility to 
more than make up for the unnecessarily difficult learning curve.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
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