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HC Tips and Tricks
I believe Tom Pittman, of CompileIt! fame (among other fames) originally put me on to this neat Binary to Decimal converter: function Bin2Dec theBin put 0 into theDec repeat until theBin is empty add theDec+first char of theBin to theDec delete first char of theBin end repeat return theDec end Bin2Dec This makes a lot of people go "wait a minute" until they look at it twice and also remember that the first char is not the first (rightmost) binary digit.
Bruce Carter
SMITC, Boise State University
I used to multiply by -1 if I wanted to change the sign of a variable. Then I saw a script that takes advantage of the fact that "-" is an operator. put -var into var
Paul Foraker
White Feather Software
You can set up a field so that the user is able to type whatever keystrokes he feels like, but any keystrokes which don't fit some specific criteria won't appear in the field. For example, say that you want the user to be able to type only a 3-digit integer into card field "Fred". This handler will do that: on keyDown DisUn if (DisUn is in "1234567890") and (the length of me < 3) then pass keyDown end keyDown This handler isn't perfect but it illustrates the basic concept: Set up some sort of qualifications for keystrokes, and don't "pass keyDown" unless the keystroke meets your criteria.
Quentin Long
Graphic Descriptions
When working with dates in HyperCard here are two good tips: 1. When trying to find previous or subesquent dates, always use the convert command to change your date into the dateItems format. This is the ONLY way to reliably move between months, days of the week, etc. People often assume that the date format is consistent but it actually varies widely. For example North American users typically use month/day/year, but Europeans typically use day/month/year. Only dateItems format, which is internal to HyperCard, is guaranteed to be unchanging. (The dateItems format is comma-delimited list of numbers in this order: year, month, day, hour, minute, second, day of week (Sunday = 1) 2. When adding or subtracting times or dates it is invariably easier to use the convert command to change your date into seconds (ie "convert the date to seconds") and simply work with the resulting integers.
Ben Lawson
The SUM function breaks if you pass it empty or if any item is not a number. But it doesn't break if you pass it empty items. You can pass
the function a list of empty items and it returns "0". answer sum(,,,,) -- works
Paul Foraker
White Feather Software
The numberFormat is consistent but confusing. A change in the numberFormat affects ALL numeric variables *simultaneously* in HyperCard, which is surprising. But it doesn't affect string variables, even if they happen to contain a string that looks exactly like a number. It's confusing because HyperCard intentionally hides the difference between numbers and strings. You can't tell visually whether a container holds a number or a string that happens to LOOK like a number. So unless you're SURE which variables hold numbers, not strings that look like numbers, it isn't obvious which variables will be affected when you change the numberFormat. Here are some examples of when numbers are stored as numbers and when they are stored as strings instead: put 1.23 into x -- x holds the NUMBER 1.23 put "1" & ".23" into x -- x holds the STRING 1.23 (due to concatenation) put x + 0 into x -- math converts it back to the NUMBER 1.23 put 1.23 into item 1 of x -- x holds the STRING 1.23 (item lists are strings) put 1.23 into cd fld "foo" -- foo holds the STRING 1.23 (fields are strings) put 0 into x -- x holds the NUMBER 0 put "0" into x -- x holds the STRING 0 (due to quotes) put zero into x -- x holds the STRING 0 (ZERO gives a string!) Here are a couple of ways you can tell if you have a number or a string: Numbers are stored if you put an unquoted number or the result of a math expression into an ordinary variable. Strings are stored whenever you use concatenation, or whenever you store anything into an item list or a field.
Anthony Rich
While technically all strings are stored within HC as text, the author
here is talking about how these strings behave. Strings that behave as
numbers respond to numberformat commands and use SANE routines for
calculations. Strings that contain numbers but behave as text do not
respond to numberformat commands. -- jg
Use of the random function as in random(10) returns a number in the range 1 to 10. You can adjust the range by using the following formula: random(highEnd-lowEnd+1)+(lowEnd-1) -- thus random(16)+4 -- returns numbers between 5 and 20 inclusive random(101)+99 -- returns numbers between 100 and 200
Greg Mcilhiney