Set the Behavior Not Working

[Roger Guay]

Thanks for taking so much time on this, Richard. I get it now, but here is another example where the dictionary could do better!




> On Aug 31, 2015, at 4:37 PM, Richard Gaskin <ambassador at fourthworld.com> wrote:
> 
> An object reference can be a string, or an expression that evaluates to a string.  For example these put the same string into the variable tVar:
> 
>  put the long id of btn id 1721 of stack "SomeStack" into tVar
>  put "btn id 1721 of stack "&quote& "SomeStack" &quote into tVar
> 
> The difference between that second expression and the example you gave above that didn't work is that when using the "set" command the tokens following it will be evaluated.
> 
> When quoted, or prepended with "the long id of ", the result of that expression is a string, which is then used by the "set" command.
> 
> But without quotes the expression is evaluated, which results in "set" using the contents of the button.
> 
> This ambiguity in xTalk was handy in allowing us to do things like this:
> 
>  put fld 1 + fld 2 into fld 3
> 
> ...but comes at a cost to ambiguity, since you're not the first person I've come across who expects an object reference to be treated as an object reference rather than as a series of tokens to be evaluated.
> 
> Lately I tend to prefer property-driven syntax for its clarity:
> 
>  set the text of fld 3 to the text of fld 1 + the text of fld 2
> 
> Much more cumbersome to write, but avoids the whole question of whether I'm referring to a property of the object or the object itself.
> 
> This "explanation" may only add to the confusion, but there's the rub: for all the seeming simplicity of xTalk, there are more than a few such ambiguities, which can make it harder to learn.  And I believe this one is among the ambiguities LiveCode Builder addresses.