Gracefully exit a loop?

Scripting Forums AppleScript | Mac OS X
#1

If my script has a repeat loop going, how can I script it so that the user can click on a “cancel” button to gracefully exit from the loop? Ideally, I’d like to not just quit the script, but actually do a few more tasks before quitting…

Thanks!

#2

Something like this might work:

set repCount to 0

repeat 10 times
	set repCount to repCount + 1
	-- do your  stuff
	set dialog1 to display dialog "Task " & repCount & " is complete." buttons {"Exit Repeat", "OK"} default button 2
	if button returned of dialog1 is "Exit Repeat" then exit repeat
end repeat

display dialog "" & repCount & " repetition(s) completed - now moving on to rest of script."
-- do rest of script
#3

Thanks! I’ll give it a spin.

#4

Unfortunately this doesn’t work. The script seems to hold everything up unless a button is pressed. I want the routine to keep going automatically unless a button is pressed, but it shouldn’t be necessary to press a button to keep it going. That is, the button shouldn’t hold things up, but should be “in the background” so to speak.

#5

AppleScript’s standard dialogs don’t have a background mode - they are in your face. Extra Suites likely has less intrusive dialogs that would be better suited to your needs and, if you are distributing the script, it provides a generous (free) user license for run-only scripts.

For more info on Extra Suites, visit: http://www.kanzu.com/

If that doesn’t suit you, you might be able to create the dialog in another script. I haven’t tried it but it seems like it might be possible.

#6

I am already going to require Extra Suites for the sound files I want the script to play - so this is fine, but how does it work? I don’t see any example scripts showing how to use this feature.

#7

My bad! I thought that Extra Suites’ “display message” was more dialog-like with buttons. You might want to investigate Smile and/or 24U Appearance OSAX. I don’t have experience with Smile but I understand that it’s possible to create independent interfaces and it may offer more flexibility.

#8

Suppose I did it in Apple Script Studio?

Would this work?

repeat 10 times 
    set repCount to repCount + 1 
    -- do your  stuff 
    on clicked  "the button"
          exit repeat
       end clicked
 end repeat

Or something of the sort?

#9

You can exit the loop (or a script) by pressing ‘Command-.’ So you don’t need a dialog. Cancelling a script with this key command generates the error -128. If you intercept this error in the ‘on error’ section, you can perform further tasks.

Example:

display dialog "You can exit the following loop by pressing “Command-.”(period).[color=#020202]"

[/color]repeat 100 times
try
set x to 1
delay 1
on error number errNr
if errNr = -128 then
display dialog "The repeat loop was canceled by the user."
end if
exit repeat
end tryend repeatdisplay dialog "You can perform other tasks here."

#10

This doesn’t seem to work for me. I tried a hundred different ways. I finally got it so that I didn’t get a syntax error - but then when I hit command-. it just stops, it doesn’t display a dialog or do anything else.

#11

Are you running the script in Script Editor? If so, save the script as an application and then launch it (outside of Script Editor).

#12

Same thing - just quits.

Applescript always seems much harder than it should be. I tried doing it in AppleScript studio but that didn’t work either. You can’t nest “on clicked the Object” commands…

#13

Odd. It worked ok here - OS X 10.2.5.

#14

Hmm. Maybe I introduced some problems when I worked it into my actual script.

In any case, I seem to have found a solution!

In AppleScript Studio I created two buttons “start” and “stop”

then I created a value “stop_running” which is either set to “true” or false".

The the loop is like this:

on clicked theObject
	if title of theObject = "start" then
		repeat while stop_running = false
			do_process ()
		end repeat
			do_exit_process ()         
	else if title of theObject = "stop" then
		set stop_running to true
	end if
end clicked

This seems to work just as I wanted! (Although there is a little bit of a lag between pressing the button and the actual stopping, but that should be OK.) Thanks for your help.

#15

You can use Jon’s Commands command ‘keys pressed’. Something like this:

repeat
set keys_pressed to (keys pressed)
if keys_pressed is {“q”, “Control”} then
try
beep 2
display dialog “Quit?”
exit repeat
end try
end if
end repeat

gl,
kel.

#16

Really? That solution’s working for you? I’m trying to do the same thing in an ASSTudio app and I can’t get it to recognize any button pressing at all while the repeat loop is engaged!

Any help would be appreciated.

Laz

#17

Hmmm.

Maybe the buttons aren’t linked properly? I often have problemsm with that in AS Studio. Try turning off the loop and assigning a simple dialog to the buttons to test them.