Inside Macintosh: AppleScript Language Guide / Part 3 - Appendixes

Appendix A - The Language at a Glance

Variable and Property Assignments and Declarations

Table A-8 summarizes the syntax for assigning values to variables and script properties and declaring local and global variables. For information about variables and script properties, see Chapter 3, "Values." For detailed information about the scope of script variables and properties, see "Scope of Script Variables and Properties," which begins on page 252.

Assignments and declarations

Assignment or declaration	Syntax
Variable assignment (and declaration if variable has not previously been declared)	copy expression to variable
	copy reference to variable
	set variable to expression
	set variable to reference
Global variable declaration	global variable [, variable ]...
Local variable declaration	local variable [, variable ]...
Script property declaration and assignment	property propertyLabel : expression
	prop propertyLabel : expression

The Text Item Delimiters property, which is the only property you can get and set using the global variable AppleScript, consists of a list of the delimiters used by AppleScript when coercing lists to strings and when getting text items from strings. This property is declared by AppleScript and is available from any script. You can get and set it using this syntax:

AppleScript's text item delimiters
text item delimiters of AppleScript

Currently, only the first delimiter in the list is used by AppleScript.