Stacks whose names start with "rev"

[Bob Sneidar]

It would be easy enough. Just maintain an array in each card's custom properties with a pseudoname and the long id as keys, and call a function to retrieve them when you reference them. But then, why name objects at all? Why not just refer to them by their long ids in the scripts? Also there is the altid property which allows you to copy an object and still refer to it by it's altid wherever it is found. 

And, thinking about this a bit, whenever I get the chance I iterate through a series of objects either by using the number of <objectType> in a repeat loop, or else by storing them in a property when I need them. I guess these are forms of abstraction. I went through all my code and "dereferenced" it in preparation for moving to behaviors. I store any objects I need to reference specifically in custom properties. 

For instance I have what I call a name tag field, which is a label indicating what the parent of a form is (the site a device belongs to, the customer a site belongs to etc.) So I store a custom property in the card or stack where the cNameTagField property is the name of the field. To avoid multiple calls to "get the <property> of", I store all such properties in a single array, get the array one time and populate script local variables. Another form of abstraction. 

I guess the reason Filemaker has to have this automatic abstraction is because the database and underlying form objects are so closely linked. It really wouldn't work any other way. In livecode, the only link between a database column and a field or button is the code you write. 

Bob S


> On Oct 2, 2018, at 15:30 , Geoff Canyon via use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
> 
> The fact that there is an underlying permanent unique id for everything,
> completely abstracted from the user. So you can change the name of a
> column, or table, or layout, one time, in the database definition, and all
> references to that object in scripts, other layouts, etc. will
> automatically update -- or really, peeking behind the curtain, I'm guessing
> they don't have to update at all because they all reference the permanent
> unique id, and only render it into the name you know it by when they render
> themselves for you to edit them.
> 
> So in LiveCode terms, imagine if you could rename a card, and any script
> that referenced that card, or controls on it, wouldn't break, but just
> automatically reflect the new name. Or rename a control, or a stack.
> 
> gc