User Guide

Lingo Dictionary 53

Lingo treats an instance of a list as a reference to the list. This means each instance is the same

piece of data, and changing it will change the original. Use the

duplicate command to create

copies of lists.

Lists are automatically disposed when they are no longer referred to by any variable. When a list is

held within a global variable, it persists from movie to movie.

You can initialize a list in the

on prepareMovie handler or write the list as a field cast member,

assign the list to a variable, and then handle the list by handling the variable.

Not all PC keyboards have square brackets. If square brackets aren’t available, use the

list

function to create a linear list.

For a property list, create the list pieces as a string before converting them into a useful list.

myListString = numToChar(91) & ":" & numToChar(93)

put myListString

-- "[:]"

myList = myListString.value

put myList

-- [:]

put myList.listP

-- 1

myList[#name] = "Brynn"

put myList

-- [#name: "Brynn"]

Examples

This statement defines a list by making the machinery variable equal to the list:

set machinery = [#gears:6, #balls:3, #ramps:8]

This handler sorts the list aList and then displays the result in the Message window:

on sortList aList

alist.sort()

put aList

end sortList

If the movie issues the statement sortList machinery, where machinery is the list in the

preceding example, the result is [#balls:3, #gears:6, #ramps:8].

This statement creates an empty linear list:

set x = [ ]

This statement creates an empty property list:

set x = [:]