Chunk order must be small to large

[Bob Sneidar]

It's the old tradeoff between functionality and ease of use. If you  
think about it, there are a lot of things we might want to say in  
Transcript (or whatevertheheck we are calling it these days). But we  
can't because there has to be SOME rules in play to prevent us from  
thinking we are saying one thing, and having Revolution think we are  
saying something else.

Take for example 5 * 5 + 1. Did we mean (5 * 5) + 1? Or did we mean 5  
* (5 + 1)? Well we know by math formula rules that the multiplication  
is calculated first, so 26 is the correct answer. It would have been  
clearer to just use the parenthesis and avoid any confusion, and many  
programmers would. So does Rev. But my point is, someone decided that  
was the rule, so we could never be mistaken about what the result  
would be.

Perhaps you could have said 'answer item 1 of word 1 of "aaa,bbb"' in  
Hypercard, and Hypercard would be perfectly happy to decide what you  
meant. But someone decided beforehand what the rules would be. It  
isn't that there ISN'T a rule, it's just that the rule was heretofore  
unknown to us.

The looser things are in the language, the greater the possibility  
that you will not get the results you expect. How often has THAT  
happened to us? As flexible as Transcript is, (please no corrections  
you know what I mean) it actually has a TON of rules that we subscribe  
to every day without even thinking about it.

So the Rev people decided to make a new rule that said, "Chunk order  
must be small to large" and it may have had to do with the internal  
mechanics of the parser, but more likely it was to keep us from saying  
things that had no meaning. I mean, how much sense would it have made  
to say, 'the short name of stack "toobig" of card "toosmall"', or  
'word 1 of char 1 of "This doesn't make any sense?"' That's my My 2¢.  
(pun intended).

Bob Sneidar
IT Manager
Logos Management
Calvary Chapel CM

On Mar 12, 2009, at 10:00 AM, DunbarX at aol.com wrote:

> Stephen;
>
> Right. I was cavalier in thinking I can validate Rev issues by  
> emulating them
> in HC. This is not fair to Rev.
>
> I like parentheses.
>
> But is this really a bug? Or just the way the parser works? I have  
> many
> constructs in HC (get word line item 3 of the...) and I hope that  
> this probably
> common and well regarded methodology is fully transparent to Rev,  
> too. If I have
> to use parentheses, well, OK. So report or no? Anyone?
>
> Craig Newman
>
> In a message dated 3/12/09 12:07:47 PM,  
> stephenREVOLUTION2 at barncard.com
> writes:
>
> Odd. Yet this works properly:
>
> get word 1 of "aaa,bbb"
>
> answer item 1 of it
>
> put it
>
>
> Congratulations. You found a bug. Please report it to the QC.
>
>
> FYI   - parentheses are your friend.  the below construction works  
> and makes
> it clearer anyway:
>
>
> answer item 1 of (word 1 of "aaa,bbb")this really a bug? Or just the  
> way the
> parser works?
>
>
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