Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pt.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!jk3t+ From: jk3t+@andrew.cmu.edu (Jonathan King) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard Subject: Re: HT & Data structures Message-ID: Date: 9 Mar 90 17:18:22 GMT References: <1779@loria.crin.fr>, <39336@apple.Apple.COM> Organization: Psychology, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA Lines: 23 In-Reply-To: <39336@apple.Apple.COM> jdevoto@Apple.COM (Jeanne A. E. DeVoto) writes: > In article <1779@loria.crin.fr> tenachi@loria.crin.fr writes: > > [...] I have a question concerning data structures > >in HyperTalk. I wondred if we have the ability to handle non simple data types > >such as arraies, records, pointers.. like in classic languages. Until now I > >haven't found something dealing with this in the documentation. > > Variables in HyperTalk are untyped, so there is not e.g. an array type > as such. This isn't the primary issue, since there are programming languages which are not at all strongly typed but which certainly do have data structures that are much more useful than what you can hack together in Hypertalk. Jeanne De Voto continues her message with examples of how some useful data structures can be faked in Hypertalk, but the problem still remains that these data types and structures are not at all abstract; you just can't refer to the "last_name" field of a record without quite a bit more Hyperhackery. This really is a serious problem with Hypertalk as it stands. I hope that it might be fixed in a future version of Hypercard. jking