Quotes become an a when using keystroke

[evandau]

I have an AS application that sets a variable to the contents of a text field, and then types it into another application using keystroke. If there is a quote " in the text field, when the variable is set and re-typed using keystroke, the quote " becomes a lowercase a. Example:

“Hey look over there” is the contents of a text field
set sampletext to contents of the text field
keystroke sampletext

result that is typed is:

aHey look over therea

Any suggestions? Should I be using text variables instead of strings?

Thanks for any advice.

[Bruce_Phillips]

the quote " becomes a lowercase a

A “straight” quote (ASCII character 34) works fine for me.

@evandau

Should I be using text variables instead of strings?

What?

[evandau]

I usually set the variable to the contents of the text field as string, could that be the cause of the problem? Should I set it as text? String seems to work well in most situations so I just use it all the time.

[Bruce_Phillips]

Keystroke doesn’t seem to work with some other characters either (e.g. keystroke "¡â„¢£¢âˆž§¶¢ªº“≠")…

@evandau

I usually set the variable to the contents of the text field as string, could that be the cause of the problem? Should I set it as text?

I think the behavior of keystroke is your problem here.

However, you should avoid the needless coercion. The class of the contents of a text field should already be Unicode text; You don’t need to coerce it to anything else (unless you have a specific reason for doing so).

Also, note that string is depreciated as of AppleScript 1.9.2 (Unicode text is preferred).

Finally, text is a synonym for string.

[evandau]

Well, thank you for the helpful string then.