The selectedObjects - is it a container or not?

[Richard Gaskin]

Bob Sneidar wrote:

 > On Apr 19, 2017, at 09:58 , Richard Gaskin wrote:
 >>
 >> E.g. this:
 >>
 >>  put arrayEncode( the customProperties["Prefs"] of stack "Prefs" ) \
 >>    into url ("binfile:"& specialFolderPath("Preferences") & \
 >>    "/MyPrefs.dat" )
 >>
 >> ...is readable enough, but far from English.
 >
 > I would not do it that way. To make it more readable I would use:
 >
 > put the customProperties["Prefs"] of stack "Prefs" into tPrefs
 > put "binfile:"& specialFolderPath("Preferences") & "/MyPrefs.dat"
 > into tFilePath
 > put arrayEncode(tPrefs) into url tFilePath
 >
 > That is english readable...

I checked my OED and I couldn't turn up an entry for customProperties, 
binfile, or arrayEncode, URL is defined differently, and none of the 
expressions I've seen in Fowler's Modern English Usage require square 
brackets or stray ampersands outside of quoted material. ;)


 > ...as much as can be expected.

Exactly.

Computers aren't people; no programming language, even the readable ones 
like Lua and LiveCode, will bear much resemblance to English.

The team has removed most references to "English-like" from the lc.com 
and .org sites, and the more I spend time with other scripting languages 
the less I use the phrase myself.


 > I think that trying to make the code compact is counter to making the
 > code readable.

Agreed, though there is sometimes a satisfying sense of completeness to 
a single statement with nested expressions that does so much.

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