do as alternateLanguage

Type

command

Summary

Evaluate a script written in another programming language

Syntax

do <script> as <alternateLanguage>

Description

Use the do as alternateLanguage variant of the do command to evaluate a script written in a non-LiveCode programming language. You can get a list of available languages by calling the alternateLanguages function.

The behavior of the do as alternateLanguage command is platform-dependent:

• On MacOS and OS X systems, the alternateLanguage is a script language (such as AppleScript) supported by the Open Scripting Architecture. The value returned by executing the script is placed into the result.

• On Windows systems, the alternateLanguage is an "active scripting" language (such as VBScript) supported by the Windows Scripting Host. The result is set to the value of any global variable called result in the script, or empty if no such variable was defined. For example, the following code will show a dialog box containing "2":

      do \"result = 1 + 1\" as \"vbscript\"
      answer the result

Any script which contains a reference to WScript will fail to run, because WScript objects do not exist in the LiveCode environment. Put return values in a global result variable instead of using WScript.Echo.

• In Web applications, "JavaScript" is the only supported alternateLanguage. The result is set to the value returned by executing the script, the supported values are objects, arrays and scalars (a string, number, boolean, undefined or null). If an error occurs then the result is set to a return delimited string, the first line is "execution error" and the following lines is the error message returned by JavaScript.

On other platforms, the alternateLanguage is not supported, and the do as alternateLanguage command will set the result to "alternate language not found".

Important

Any file path used in the script must be in the native format of the current system. In particular this means that paths must be converted to Windows native format before use on Windows machines. In most cases this can be done by replacing slash with backslash in the path.

Parameters

Name	Type	Description
script	string	A script written in a non-LiveCode programming language.
alternateLanguage	string	The name of one of the alternateLanguages.

Examples

do field "Statements" as "AppleScript"

do "document.location" as "JavaScript"

Related

command: do

function: alternateLanguages, result, platform

glossary: command, file path

keyword: as

Compatibility and Support

Introduced

LiveCode 1.1

OS

mac

windows

web