[ANN] LiveCode List Processor

[Richard Gaskin]

Alex Tweedly wrote:

 > Never mind objects; we could restate it as .... "LC has no way to
 > handle lists of arbitrary chunks of data".
 >
 > Your phrase " ... simple matter of ... return-delimited chunk ..."
 > hides the the real issue:
 >     what if the chunks of data might contain 'return's ?

For ISO-8859-1 data I've replace in-data tabs with 0x04 and in-data 
returns with 0x11, the same format Filemaker uses for its Merge exports.

Obviously this isn't quite as simple with Unicode, but even then we're 
left with a similar if not larger problem:  if a tab is 0x09, what is a 
Unicode tab?

I suspect that when dealing with delimited text the engine can figure 
out what it needs to make chunk expressions work.

 > You can find another character which is less likely (!!?) - but that
 > doesn't give you "arbitrary data".

There's the thing, the reason for my admitted need for coffee:  in my 
simple world I have no requirement for working with lists of arbitrary 
data.  When I need to work with arbitrary data I use arrays, and for 
things that lend themselves to chunk expressions I use chunk expressions.

Peter's original problem statement was:

    LiveCode chunking is great for handling lists but, as far
    as I can tell, is missing forward and backward navigation
    through lists. I decided to write a few simple functions
    to come up with such a mechanism.

For that I would use a pointer into the list to keep track of the 
concept of a "current" record, making forward and backward navigation 
somewhat straightforward.  And given that the data was described as 
being a string list, my inclination would be to leave it that way.

I was unable to find where he mentioned "arbitrary data"; it seemed he 
was working with things chunk expressions handle well, as he described.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
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