Im one to IM, meaning i use iChat a lot aswell as other IM apps. And now Im back in school, using my computer for different purposes such as essays and wut not. this had caused me to type w/ abbreviated words like using ‘u’ for ‘you.’ etc.
wut i want to do is create an apple script that i can run for any text document that will replace any given abbreviation and replace it w/ the written word. so, when i run it, it will replace all the ’ u ’ w/ ’ you '. catch my drift? ty
Of course what you propose is possible, although applescript is not really intended for such intensive parsing of data. Languages such as perl are much more adept at handling tasks like these though, so using a ‘do shell script’ with a perl routine to replace all occurrences of a string might be a better bet than AS alone. Applescript does provide some basic pattern matching, but depending on the size and complexity of your parsing task, you may find it a bit slow and the coding a but unnecessary versus a simple find/replace using perl/shell.
Evn bttr, u could lrn 2 typ in propr nglish, so u woulnd’t have 2 bother writing a scpt to do it 4 u. How duz typin ‘wut’ save u tym vs. typin ‘what’? Typing the real words should flow out faster than all that IM jibberish does. If not, maybe you’re on IM too much. 
j