Array key paths

[Richard Gaskin]

Peter Haworth wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 7:17 AM, Richard Gaskin wrote:
>
>> In my brief experiments it seems the path key array works like any other
>> array, in that it's an associative array so that it makes no difference
>> whether the key is numeric or a string, since the under-the-hood
>> representation is still a string.
>>
>> Given this, Mark's 3) above is something I'm not seeing.
>>
>> What am I not understanding?
>
> I seem to remember getting an error if the keys of path key were not
> integers.  Are you saying you've made it work with non-integer keys?

This test seems to work:

Script of one button to load the array:

on mouseUp
    global gA
    put "bob" into gA["bob"]
    put "44" into gA["bob"]["age"]
    put "ted" into gA["ted"]
    put "48" into gA["ted"]["age"]
end mouseUp

Script of a second button to split a key and use it to retrieve a value:

on mouseUp
    global gA
    put fld "key" into s
    split s by comma
    put gA[s] into fld "r"
    put the result
end mouseUp


There are two fields - the one named "key" has:

bob,age

...and when I click the second button the field named "r" shows:

44

Nothing shows in the Message Box, so presumably there was no error.

This is what I would expect, since associative arrays usually have no 
way to distinguish between numeric and non-numeric keys, since all of 
them are treated as strings when they go through the hash to assign 
their buckets.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
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