Language Guide

CHAPTER 4

Commands

Types of Commands 73

Similarly, if you specify a reference incompletely in the command line,

AppleScript uses the default target speciﬁed in the enclosing Tell statement

to complete the reference. For example, the following statement is equivalent

to both of the previous examples:

tell front document of app "Scriptable Text Editor"

delete word 1

end tell

For information about sending application commands to script objects, see

Chapter 9, “Script Objects,” which begins on page 265.

AppleScript Commands 4

AppleScript commands are commands that are built into the AppleScript

language. They act on values in scripts. The target of an AppleScript command

is a value in the current script, which is usually speciﬁed in the direct

parameter of the command.

There are only ﬁve AppleScript commands: Copy, Count, Get, Run, and Set. All

of these commands can also function as application commands. For the Count,

Get, Run, and Set commands, if the direct parameter is a value, then the

command functions as an AppleScript command. If the direct parameter is an

application object, the command functions as an application command.

For example, this Count command functions as an AppleScript command

because the direct parameter is a value (a list):

count {"How", "many", "items", "in", "this", "list"}

This Count command functions as an application command because the direct

parameter is an application object:

count words in paragraph 1 of front document of 

application "Scriptable Text Editor"

For the Copy command, if the value of the to parameter is a reference to an

application object, then the command functions as an application command.

Otherwise, the command is an AppleScript command.