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PlanetPress Talk Basics
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• Names must be unique (no two elements in a document can have the same name).
• Names cannot begin with a number, and can contain only the following ASCII characters: underscore,
upper and lower case letters of the alphabet, all digits 0 through 9. If you use an underscore in the name,
it should not appear as either the first or last character of the name as this may cause internal conflicts in
the software.
• Names can be a maximum of 50 characters in length.
• PlanetPress Talk variable and command names are reserved words; you cannot use any of these reserved
words as a name.
It is always recommended that you choose a name that reflects the content or purpose of the element you
are creating. A meaningful name makes it easier to distinguish one element from another, and thus makes
a document easier to maintain.
Data Types
PlanetPress Talk provides the following data types:
PlanetPress Talk strictly enforces its data types. For example, the show command accepts a string as its
argument; an error occurs if you attempt to send it an integer as an argument. You can use any of the
What data types are available in PlanetPress Talk?
Data Type Example
Integer 3
Measure or Floating Point 3,2300987
Currency 5.25
String Michel or $4,567.09
Boolean Yes or No
Color Array (CMYK) [100, 100, 0, 0]
Array [Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday]
(a seven-element array of type string)
[12 18 103 57]
(a four-element array of type integer)
[True True False False True False False]
(a seven-element array of type Boolean)
Directory [c:\images\house.jpg c:\images\apt.jpg]
(a directory that contains two pathnames)