Can a function return two values?

[SparkOut]

At a tangent, I was wondering where I could find an (old) article by (IIRC) Richard (Fourth World) concerning a technique to return a value from a function as well as specific value in "the result". I am at a loss to track it down.

[Klaus]

Did you check his website?
http://www.fourthworld.com/rev/index.html

[SparkOut]

Well, yes. But not successful in tracking it down. I am not even certain, but I think Richard was the author.

[bogs]

Did you check in the journal? If it isn't there, you might find it in his revNet plugin...

GoRev(Livecode)Net plugin...

or in the number of tutorials he had in a much older version of RR...

Transcript WWWWhhhhaaa....?

or possibly in this stack...

Meta-fan-tabulous!

or my last guess, the scripting conferences?

[FourthWorld]

At a tangent, I was wondering where I could find an (old) article by (IIRC) Richard (Fourth World) concerning a technique to return a value from a function as well as specific value in "the result". I am at a loss to track it down.

That may have been an either/or, as in being able to return a value from a command with "the result". If I'd written that a function can do both I don't recall what it is. And if I did, since apparently it's not easy to remember I don't think I'd recommend it even if I knew what it was.

An array seems simplest for the OP's use case.

[dunbarx]

You may be referring to the ability of a command handler, as opposed to a function handler, to return a result.

The difference is that the control structure "return" puts a value into "the result" whereas in a function handler, return, er, returns a value.

Code: Select all

on mouseUp
   resultTest
   answer the result
end mouseUp

on resultTest
   repeat with y = 1 to 10
      if y = 5 then return random(99)
   end repeat
end resultTest

Craig Newman

[jacque]

I regularly use numtochar(3) as a delimiter when I need something that is guaranteed to be unprintable.

Me too, and also numtochar(8) as a secondary delimiter. No one can put those into text when typing.

[richmond62]

I am a simple soul (well, let's pretend that is true for the moment) . . .

Imagine a sentence:

"I am a Scottish man who lives in Bulgaria"

and imagine I want to chop this up into 2 subsentences:

"I am a Scottish man" and

"who lives in Bulgaria"

I have a feeling that a function to do that sort of thing should be about 5 to 10 minutes work:
-

-

Code: Select all

on mouseUp
   put empty into fld "f1"
   put empty into fld "f2"
   put fld "ff" into FFFF
   put "z" into XXX
   repeat until FFFF is empty
      if (word 1 of FFFF) is not "who" and XXX is not "x" then
         put ((word 1 of FFFF) & " ") after fld "f1"
         delete word 1 of FFFF
      else
         put "x" into XXX
         put ((word 1 of FFFF) & " ") after fld "f2"
         delete word 1 of FFFF
      end if
   end repeat
end mouseUp

Of course that is extremely basic and just looks for the word "who", but looking for a designated item delimiter
would be just as easy.

[jacque]

You're looking at writing a full syntax parser, which isn't an easy task. There are commercial programs that claim to do it but I'm not sure even those are perfect.

Google Docs tries to help with that if you turn on the option and it gets it wrong half the time.

[mwieder]

Well, leaving aside the fact that "who lives in Bulgaria" is a dependent clause rather than a subsentence (unless you want to stack a ? at the end, and then this becomes a different discussion)...

You might try breaking on a finite set of words that trigger a dependency, "who" being one of them.
But I think Jacque is right - trying to treat the English language as something logical is a fool's errand.

Jacque - if Google docs gets it right half the time, maybe you could just use half the results.

[jacque]

Jacque - if Google docs gets it right half the time, maybe you could just use half the results.

Heh. I wonder what it would do if I started writing like Yoda.

[dunbarx]

Richmond.

I may be either oversimplifying or trivializing what you want to do, but with your sentence in a field 1:

I am a Scottish man who lives in Bulgaria

and knowing where the break is going to be, either at a word, the word number, whatever:

Code: Select all

on mouseUp
   put fld 1 into tText 
   answer "Break where?" with "word" or "word number"
   if it is "word number" then
      ask "word number?"
      answer word 1 to it - 1 of tText & return & word it to 100000 of tText
   else if it is "word" then
      ask "Word?"
      put wordOffset(it,tText) into wordNum
      answer word 1 to wordNum - 1 of tText & return & word wordNum to 100000 of tText
   end if
end mouseUp

You could use the itemDel similarly.

Craig

[richmond62]

You could use the itemDel similarly.

Indeed I could . . . but my 'problem' is that I spend an awful lot of time with children between 6 and 11 years old
so I tend to simplify things.

[richmond62]

Well, leaving aside the fact that "who lives in Bulgaria" is a dependent clause

Ooh, sorry, I forgot to wear my Grammar-Queen frock today.

[richmond62]

a full syntax parser

About as likely as my waking up in bed one day and finding my wife has been replaced by a robot and I haven't noticed.