Show containment and properties using of

AppleScript is not a "dot" language, like Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), other BASIC languages, or Python. To show containment and attributes, AppleScript's "English-like" syntax combines the preposition of with word order that is the reverse of VBA. Compare the following examples:

ActiveDocument.Paragraphs(1).Range.Text

tell application "Microsoft Word"
	content of text object of paragraph 1 
	of active document
end tell

In AppleScript, you can specify the paragraph element by an index, 1, but you use the singular term, paragraph, and not the plural form, Paragraphs, as you do in VBA. And, you don't type parentheses in AppleScript; you simply use paragraph 1.

You may be used to "dot" languages in which you "drill down" from a top level object to the property you want to access. In AppleScript, you "burrow up" from the property to the top-level object, and there are AppleScript strings with multiple uses of the preposition of.

There is an alternative. You can also use the 's syntax, in the preferred word order, as shown in the following example:

active document's paragraph 1's text object's content

Because that sounds awkward in English, most people use this syntax only one level deep, such as active document's paragraph 1 or text object's content.

A third and often very useful option is to tell an object to get some property or element, as shown in the following code:

tell active document to get its text object

You can also use nested tell blocks, as shown in the following example:

tell application "Microsoft Word"
	tell active document
		tell paragraph 1
			tell text object
				get content
			end tell
		end tell
	end tell
end tell

Implicit vs. explicit get

Occasionally, AppleScript code with multiple uses of the preposition of doesn't work. In these cases, there is no implicit get, and you have to explicitly state get to access a deeper of property. Compare the following examples:

tell application "Microsoft Word"
	tell active document
		tell text object
			tell find object
				set content to "blue"
				set forward to true
				execute find
			end tell
		end tell
	end tell
end tell
--> false

tell application "Microsoft Word"
	tell active document
		tell text object
			tell (get find object) -- crucial!
				set content to "blue"
				set forward to true
				execute find
			end tell
		end tell
	end tell
endtell
--> true

It can be difficult to understand what is wrong because this situation doesn't yield an error. Instead, you get an incorrect result. This rarely happens in Microsoft Word, but is more likely in Microsoft Entourage with Microsoft Exchange Server properties where you can receive either an error or a missing value as a result, when you don't use an explicit get. Therefore, when in doubt, use a get.

Use set, not =, to assign values to variables

An error that scripters new to AppleScript encounter could make is using = as an assignment operator (the implicit Let method in VBA), as in:

someVariable = "text"

In AppleScript, = is used only as an equality comparison operator, as in:

if someVariable = "text" then...

To assign a value to a variable, you must use set...to, as in:

set someVariable to "text"

Also note that unlike VBA, the syntax is the same regardless of the data type of the item being assigned to the variable. Whether the item is a string, integer, or object, you always use set.