paragraphs seems to have stopped working with 10.4.10

Scripting Forums AppleScript | Mac OS X
#1

I have what was a working script that suddenly fails. I inserted a display dialog command at various places to localize the failure. Here is the failing code segment.


set items_list to (do shell script "/usr/local/bin/addrbkupdt")'s paragraphs
	display dialog item 1 of items_list

The problem seems to be (mostly a guess based on observation) that the newline characters no longer are recognized by the paragraphs command. When the display tries to get item 1 I get an error that displays the entire output from the shell script. Unfortunately the error box is too large and there is no error text.

The only change has been an upgrade to 10.4.10. Is anyone aware of a bug introduced by the new version and/or can someone help me debug this? TIA.

#2

Something like this works for me:

do shell script "/usr/bin/jot 2" -- Line feeds
set items_list to paragraphs of result --> {"1", "2"}

display dialog item 1 of items_list

set items_list to paragraphs of "A
B" -- Carriage returns

display dialog item 1 of items_list

set test to paragraphs of ("@" & return & (ASCII character 10) & "#") -- Both (Win/DOS)

display dialog item 1 of test

Does Script Editor’s Event Log show the shell script returning the expected result?

Edit: I’m on Mac OS X 10.4.10.

#3

Thanks for the reply. You’ve pretty much blown my theory (as baseless as it was anyway :-)). Could this be a length issue? The paragraphs are quite long (>128 bytes). Any other ideas why this would suddenly stop working?

#4

Technical Note TN2065: do shell script in AppleScript

#5

Thanks again. I’m batting .000 as the returned data is no where near a meg let alone a gig. I am out of even dumb ideas.

#6

Does this dialog say “list”?

set items_list to (do shell script "/usr/local/bin/addrbkupdt")'s paragraphs
display dialog class of items_list
#7

Thanks for the reply and sorry for taking so long to get back to this. The answer is, “no,” I think. I get an non-specific Applescript error that displays the returned data as a single string. So I don’t know if it was the display dialog or the set that got the error.

#8

I did a little more debugging to determine exactly what statement is getting the error. It is indeed the set that gets the error.

set items_list to (do shell script "/usr/local/bin/addrbkupdt")'s paragraphs

However, all it says is “Applscript Error” then displays all the returned data (or at least the amount it can fit in the window). Is that of any help (keeping in mind this was working until 10.4.10)? TIA.