AppleScript: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition

Chapter 4. Introducing the Language

Part I of this book describes AppleScript as a technology—why and where and how you use it (Chapter 1 and Chapter 2), the Apple events that lie behind it, the AppleScript scripting component that implements it, the kinds of file it creates and some of the details of working with those files, and the means and modes whereby applications make themselves scriptable with it (Chapter 3). But AppleScript is also a language, a programming language that you'll want to learn and understand in order to create and edit AppleScript code on your own. Part II of this book teaches it to you.

This chapter serves as a starting point for your journey through the AppleScript language. The longest journey, it is said, begins with a single step. But even before that, sometimes it's a good idea to contemplate the road. That's what this chapter does. It describes the nature of the AppleScript language in very general terms. What sort of language is it? What is it like to learn and to use?

The AppleScript language deserves contemplation, and often gets it. AppleScript's users seem to spend as much time and energy venting their feelings about AppleScript as they do writing and editing AppleScript code. It's that kind of language. It frequently evokes an emotional reaction, and that emotion can range from frustration through exasperation to fury. Yet at the same time AppleScript has some surprisingly clever behaviors and abilities, and some remarkably sophisticated features. ...