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[Monte Goulding]

> On 10 Aug 2017, at 2:25 am, Bob Sneidar via use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
> 
> I have a function that returns the stack of an object by passing the long id of the object. getParentStack(the long id of me). All it does is parses the long id by using wordOffset to find the word "stack" then returns word tWord to -1 of the long id. Pretty basic. 
> 
> That method can be used for anything, from the owner to the card to the first group etc. I don't think we need more properties per se. 

Yes we have these kinds of functions in the ide too. I just think we shouldn’t need something that depends on the format of a long ID to do something so common as to get a reference to the card of a control or stack of anything. 

One day I dream of an object reference that we can get and use that is not a string that needs to be resolved every time it’s used but a direct reference to the object. Perhaps if someone tries to do a string operation on it then it would be turned into a long id string just like when someone tries to do “1” + 1 it’s turned into a number. But if it’s just passed around or stored in a custom property then it remains a resolved handle to the object and can cope with things like the ID or name or filename being changed in the session. If we had that we would want things like `is a {stack | card | button …}` and `{stack | card | mainstack} of`.

I have actually thought about whether it would be reasonable for `the long id` to return such an object reference as it would stringify automagically if necessary. However, deleting the object would mean the string form couldn’t be created so that probably wouldn’t work... I think complex objects that handle many object references and the IDE would have a significant bump in speed if we did such a thing.

Cheers

Monte