The truth is, AppleScript is a huge bait-n-switch: it looks friendly and approachable compared to other languages, but that's all just smoke and mirrors: once you actually get into using it, it is as complicated, convoluted, and intolerant as any other "programmer language".
The gap between AppleScript and C++ is far less than the gap between AppleScript and Logo, for example. (And folks who claim that AppleScript is "non-programmer friendly" wonder why I now laugh bitterly at "Not quite as obnoxiously hostile as popular programmer languages" is not the same thing as "non-programmer friendly". Oh, and for bonus irony: AppleScript's vector arrays use a truly brain-damaged implementation that manages to turn what should be O(1) (constant-time) lookups into O(n) (linear-time) lookups, so that they perform no better than linked lists unless you invoke certain arcane and nasty (and potentially crashy) kludges to sneak around the performance-killing algorithm. No idea why they did this, especially as linked lists have long since been de-documented and (I think) deprecated, but the stupid things are still in there along with all the other accummulated rot and damage of the last twenty-odd years. However, rather than just replace the original linked list implementation, they kept it and added the new vector array implementation alongside, using curly braces to distinguish these new vector lists from the square bracketed linked lists.
#Launchbar where are scripts update
Linked lists (as any fule kno) have dreadful O(n) performance characteristics when accessing arbitrary items (the most common use case), so vector array-based lists were introduced in a subsequent update (1.1?). Square brackets are the original list notation from AppleScript 1.0, back from when its list type used a linked list implementation.
#Launchbar where are scripts code
Except in Swift, where you have to use square brackets for everything.ĪppleScript Code Signing Language Design LaunchBar Mac Mac App Programming Security Swift Programming Language Note that you cannot use square brackets and colons for record literals. But it’s nice when you have a mix of lists and records to be able to write: [ I do not see this documented anywhere, so I’m not sure how far back scripts with this syntax will work. I learned, for example, that at some point AppleScript added support for using square brackets for list literals. It’s also instructive to look at the built-in actions to see how they work. There is actually quite extensive support and documentation for custom actions now, with more emphasis on sharing actions (and therefore code signing to make that secure).
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