short name broken?

[Richard Gaskin]

Mark Waddingham wrote:

 > On 2016-11-01 19:12, Richard Gaskin wrote:
 >> You're absolutely right.  When in doubt I check the
 >> Winkler-Kamins-DeVoto reference, and indeed they verify that all name
 >> queries will return a value, even when the property itself is empty.
 >> When using "the short name" on an unnamed object, WKD says it should
 >> return the ID form, as LC currently does.
 >
 > I must confess I struggle to find any reasonable logic behind the
 > current behavior of 'the short name' when the actual name of the
 > object is empty.

At least I'm in good company.  Despite decades of using this family of 
languages, it just seemed to logical that querying a property would 
deliver its actual value that I was momentarily certain that was the case.


 > Indeed, I'd suggest that it is actually a bug (well,
 > I guess 'anomaly' by our current definition).
 > As 'the short name' is not meant to return a control reference, it is
 > slightly unsettling that it does return a control reference in one
 > case.

Agreed, and it was encouraging to see this request confirmed, for the 
Inspector to display only the actual value of the object's name (which 
may be empty):
http://quality.livecode.com/show_bug.cgi?id=17432

I'll see if I can get some time to submit a pull request for that.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com