AppleScript Syntax: Dealing with the Depressing Reality

Given the preceding two posts, I hope it is clear that I think syntax is of too much concern in AppleScript discussions. The preoccupation with syntax can hide real problems that might actually be sensibly discussed. It seems appropriate to mention some of the aspects of AppleScript that I think could be usefully discussed. I'll limit myself here to points where I can provide some practical tips as starting points.

To begin, name resolution is pretty tricky. Rather than some sensible lexical scoping, there are complex rules. John Gruber provides an excellent description of how names are resolved, in the context of explaining a subtle bug. There is a fact that I've found useful for avoiding name conflicts: you do not have use tell blocks.

Frequently, you just need to tell applications to do a few things. However, example code often has the entire program in a single tell block. That leads to all the tricky rules for determining when a term is looked up in an application dictionary, or a Scripting Addition, or as a handler in the script. Many of these issues can be eliminated by doing something like tell application "Finder" to … instead of using the block format. In essence, this is the same idea as avoiding the use of an implicit this or self object, as seen in some object oriented languages.

Said approach also is particularly enlightening on how much of your program is actually spent dealing with interprocess communication, and how much is program logic. Frequently, not much is actually spent on dealing with IPC, but it leads to a lot of complications. Simple solution: encapsulate IPC in handlers.

Text handling is important in many scripts. AppleScript is pretty weak in its text handling. Mac OS X comes with a powerful text processing system: the Unix shell. Use do shell script for text manipulation.

AppleScript is lacking in the data structures it provides. The one I most frequently miss is an associative array, but it's not the only one. Many other languages provide a richer library of data structures, better support for defining your own, or both. You could often dispense entirely with AppleScript, except for communicating with applications, which might just be a few lines. You can communicate with applications using the osascript shell command. This lets you use just about any language you like, and still be able to gain the main benefit of AppleScript.

There must be many more.