Append text to a string in Applescript

Question

It seems that the concatenation in AppleScript doesn't let you easily append text to a string variable. I have the following line that would work in most other languages:

repeat with thisRecpt in recipients of eachMessage
    set recp to recp & "," & address of thisRecpt
end repeat

From what I can tell, this doesn't seem to work in AppleScript, as you cannot use the recp variable within the same line apparently. Is there any easier way of adding text to the end of a variable without having to use two variables within the loop?

Thanks!

Nicholas Riley · Accepted Answer · 2011-06-10 01:59:07Z

3

The code you posted works fine as long as recp is set to something first, say "". However, you'll then get a , as the first character in your string, which is probably not what you want.

Instead, you can do this:

set _delimiters to AppleScript's text item delimiters
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ","
set recp to eachMessage's recipient's address as string
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to _delimiters

Yes, it's ugly, but it's more efficient and you'll only get "," between addresses.

answered Jun 10, 2011 at 1:59

Nicholas Riley

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4 Comments

mjdth Over a year ago

Ah yes, thank you! I didn't realize that "set" was basically the declaration of the variable. Thanks for the help.

Philip Regan Over a year ago

@mjdth: If you don't know what set is, then I suggest spending time with the Applescript language guide before going too much further with your project. Applescript is not like most other languages.

mjdth Over a year ago

It's a very, very minimal project in AppleScript, and it's working now. I will be sure to check out the language guide for future projects, though. Thank you.

d-b Over a year ago

set recp to recp & address of thisRecpt & "," should work, shouldn't it? An unnecessary comma at the end (I use linefeed as separator)

TunaFFish · Accepted Answer · 2023-03-25 19:35:07Z

0

Shorter and cleaner way to:

# cut off last character in a string
set myString to "foo,bar,baz,"
set myString to text 1 thru -2 of myString
log myString

# cut off first character in a string
set theString to ",foo,bar,baz"
set theString to text 2 thru -1 of theString
log theString

answered Mar 25, 2023 at 19:35

TunaFFish

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1 Comment

d-b Over a year ago

What does this have to do with the question!?!?

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