curiosities in object reference

[Peter M. Brigham]

So I have a field, let's say field "text", with the contents "one two three four".

if I do this:
   put the long id of fld "text" into fRef
   put "deux" into word 2 of fRef

it puts "deux" into word 2 of "field id 1022 of stack…" and doesn't resolve fRef as a field reference.

But if I do:
   put the text of fRef into tText

it *does* resolve fRef as a field reference, as I would expect. It appears that the engine only resolves these references when the context/syntax indicates that it should expect an object reference, and not otherwise.

Is there any way I can put "deux" into word 2 of the field without jumping through hoops, like
   put "deux" into newWord
   do "put newWord into word two of" && fRef
??

I don't want to do:
   put the text of fRef into tText
   put "deux" into word 2 of tText
   set the text of fRef to tText
because the field may contain formatted text that I want to preserve.

ideas? or am I stuck with hoops?

-- Peter

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