problem with counting words

[Peter M. Brigham]

While we're waiting to see what comes of language extensions, here's a function that I use to simplify getting items from lists with various delimiters:

function getItem tList,tIndex,tDelim
   -- returns item # tIndex of tList, given itemdelimiter = tDelim
   -- could just "get item tIndex of tList" in the calling handler but
   --    then have to set and restore the itemDelimiter, so this is less hassle
   --    and doesn't risk your forgetting to reset it
   -- defaults to tDelim = comma
   
   if tDelim = empty then put comma into tDelim
   set the itemdelimiter to tDelim
   return item tIndex of tList
end getItem

If tList = "a/b/c*dd*e/f,g/h*i" and you wanted to extract the "dd" then you would call:
   put getItem(getItem(tList,3,"/"),2,"*")

-- Peter

Peter M. Brigham
pmbrig at gmail.com
http://home.comcast.net/~pmbrig



On Oct 14, 2014, at 4:10 PM, DunbarX at aol.com wrote:

> Richard.
> 
> Right, and I am sure you know this, but it was never particularly a speed issue,rather  more a mental and organizational one, that would be even more opaque if you had, say a handful of nested delimiters instead of just two.
> 
> Craig
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Gaskin <ambassador at fourthworld.com>
> To: use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com>
> Sent: Tue, Oct 14, 2014 3:46 pm
> Subject: Re: problem with counting words
> 
> FWIW, changing the itemdel takes only about 0.00012 ms on a relatively 
> slow (2.16GHz) Mac, and about a third as long (0.000043 ms) on my custom 
> Linux box (3.0 GHz).