Clearing local variables

[Mark Waddingham]

On 2016-04-29 17:24, Richard Gaskin wrote:
> In the rare cases where we might want to modify the string being
> traversed, does the "repeat with i = 1 to..." form still allow that?

Yes - you can still modify the string being traversed with repeat for 
each, but the modifications won't actually affect what is being iterated 
over.

   repeat for each line tLine in tMyLines
     ... mutate tMyLines ...
   end repeat

Can be seen as being:

   local __tMyLines
   put tMyLines into __tMyLines
   repeat for each line tLine in __tMyLines
     ... mutate tMyLines ...
   end repeat

And due to the copy-on-write semantics in 7+, you don't actually pay for 
the 'invisible' temporary copy unless you actually do a modification.

In the case of 'repeat with' - the expressions involved are all 
evaluated before the loop starts:

   repeat with x = 1 to the number of lines in tMyLines
     ... mutate tMyLines ...
   end repeat

Can be seen as doing:

   local __start, __end
   put 1 into __start
   put the number of lines in tMyLines into __end
   repeat with x = __start to __end
     ... mutate tMyLines ...
   end repeat

As you can see, tMyLines (or even a copy of it) doesn't actually figure 
in the control part of the loop after it starts going.

Warmest Regards,

Mark.

-- 
Mark Waddingham ~ mark at livecode.com ~ http://www.livecode.com/
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