[slang-users] Newbie question

[TJ Walls <twalls@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello All,

  I am currently learning S-lang and am running into some conceptual 
troubles. Most of my experience is in strongly typed languages, so I am 
have problems with the following code snippet from the slrn macros page, 
with my questions inserted:

<snip>
   variable
     article = article_as_string(),
     % TJ: Ok, article_as_string returns a String_Type ...
     % TJ: so far, so good ...
     i = is_substr (article, "\n\n"),
     sortres,
     header = "",
     % TJ: And header is a String_Type, initialized empty ...
     body = "";

   % seperate header and body, taking into account empty bodies
   if (i == 0)
     header = article;
   else
     {
	header = article[[0:i-1]];
	% TJ: Here the problems start ... [0:i-1] is an array with
	% TJ: elements initialized from 0 to (i-1), ok but 
        % TJ: article is a String_Type what does article[array] mean?
	% TJ: Is it the first i members of the string ... it would seem
	% TJ: we want the first i lines, but why does this work?
	body = article[[i:]];
     }   
   
   % remove continuation lines from the header
   while (str_replace (header, "\n ", " "))
     % TJ: Ok, replace the first newline character with a single
     % TJ: whitespace ...
     header = ();
     % TJ: What does this mean!?

   while (str_replace (header, "\n\t", " "))
     header = ();
   
   % convert the header to an array of strings
   header = strtok (header, "\n");
   % TJ: Didn't we just replace all the newline characters??

   % do the actual sorting
   sortres = array_sort (header, cmp);
   header = header[sortres];
   % TJ: header was a String_Type ... now it seems to be an array
   % TJ: of strings??

<snip>

  Thanks in advance for any advice for a newbie. Is there further
documentation on S-lang beyond http://www.s-lang.org so that I might not 
bother you with such silly questions in the future?

  Also, does anyone know of a S-Lang editing mode for XEmacs?

Sincerely,
-TJ Walls


"It's not easy being green."                               -Kermit the Frog
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
TJ Walls <twalls@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>  |                  PhD Candidate
SUNY - Stony Brook                         |  http://www.physics.sunysb.edu



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