World: r3wp

What I need is to be able to capture the full path of the first arg 
passed to such script.

Not just the filename.

The reason is that the script is no of the same path of /usr/local/bin 
the script fails to find the file.

Which is passed as arg

Hopefully this is not too convoluted...

if you encap it, the CD will be the dir where the program was started 
from. when run with a shebang though... not sure if there's a way.

No SDK in OSX :-/

Hi Jaime,
I think you're looking for this

system/script/path

probe system/options

IIRC the shell-dir is somewhere there. Or try system/options/script/parent/path.

Thx, Ingo and Volker, what I was looking for is SYSTEM/OPTIONS/PATH

Dumb question: When I'm printing a string, what's the best way to 
show special characters (^/ etcetera) in their special form, rather 
than just expanding them (turning ^/ into an actual newline, for 
example)?

well, I know probe is the way to do it direct to stdout, but I want 
to save the "probe" value to a string

and for the public record, at least part of my answer is:

raw-str: mold real-str

yay for "source probe"

How about going the other way? Turning newlines into ^/ characters 
and so on?

and again I answer my own bloody question:

replace/all (mold real-text) "^/" "^^/")


Guess I don't actually start thinking for myself until I ask the 
question somewhere that I can look dumb ;)

But that's the best way - you're more likely to remember it then!

Is there a way to "copy" an object  (already defined)  so the result 
is a distinct object? It's probably something easy but for the life 
of me...

make

Thanks Anton. Yep, right after I wrote that I said to myself  "Self, 
why don't you try  'd: make c [ ]'"  and it works...and it is in 
the docs on objects. Duh. Thanks.

:-)

Good to know I'm not the only one :)

You kidding? I hate it when I spend hours trying to figure out what's 
up. : (

Just remember, strings are copied, blocks are deep copied, but sub-objects 
are shared.

>> o: make object! [s: "hello" b: [there] o: make object! []]
>> o2: make o []
>> same? o/s o2/s
== false
>> same? o/b o2/b
== false
>> same? o/o o2/o
== true

Thanks! Sub-objects shared. Hmmm. That would have thrown me fo sure.

This is IMO inconsistent and should be changed:

>> ? for
USAGE:
    FOR 'word start end bump body

DESCRIPTION:
     Repeats a block over a range of values.
     FOR is a function value.

ARGUMENTS:
     word -- Variable to hold current value (Type: word)

     start -- Starting value (Type: number series money time date char)

     end -- Ending value (Type: number series money time date char)

     bump -- Amount to skip each time (Type: number money time char)
     body -- Block to evaluate (Type: block)

(SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES)
     catch
     throw
>> a: 2.0
== 2.0
>> for test 1 a 1 [print test]
** Script Error: for expected end argument of type: integer
** Near: for test 1 a 1
>> number? a
== true


It should be possible to use decimal! as well. The interpreter should 
implicitly convert it to an integer!

The docs state number! and not integer!

The type of the start and end variables must be the same. If you 
look at the source of for, you will see that it throws that error 
when they are not.

Yes, but 2.0 can be converted to 2, so no problem.

I would like to have read-thru in Rebol?Core as well

so at least such a simple function:

read-thru-to: func[url target /local data loc-path][
	either exists? target [read/binary target][
		loc-path: first split-path target
		if not exists? loc-path [make-dir/deep loc-path]
		write/binary target data: read/binary url
	]
	data
]

Oldes - on true for exists? shouldn't it be "data: read/binary target" 
since you return :data?

Robert, although 1 and 1.0 are both numbers, they are not the same 
type in REBOL. Sure, they can be converted, but unless you do so 
they aren't. It would be simpler to just rewrite your example to 
this:

>> a: 2.0
== 2.0
>> for test 1.0 a 1 [print test]
1.0
2.0


and not have the type mismatch I was talking about. Unfortunately 
REBOL doesn't have type signiatures that are powerful enough to specify 
that these two parameters need to be the same type, so that constraint 
has to be enforced in the code.

Oldes, a builtin read-thru would require Core to be installed rather 
than just copied somewhere, just like it does with View - view-root 
is set during installation. Still, all of the *-thru functions are 
written in REBOL, so they can be copied and adapted to your purposes 
quite easily.

a view-root: what-dir works quite well.

See, I told you they could be adapted easily :-)

:)

Personally, I always thought view-root should be under system/options 
somewhere.

Robert, what are the actual numbers you need FOR for ?

BrianH, like system/options/home ?

Yeah, something like that. Maybe system/user/sandbox or something. 
For that matter, system/user/home should be set to something useful 
on Windows, like %userprofile% or better yet %appdata%.

Oldes, Volker, I put into my rebol/core  user.r  file:
	view-root: dirize clean-path system/options/home/../view
	user-prefs: context [debug: none] ; fake user-prefs
	vbug: func [msg [block! any-string!] /local dbg][
	    if not dbg: user-prefs/debug [exit]
	    msg: head insert remold msg "view "
	    either file? dbg [write/append dbg msg] [print msg]
	]

along with the source to these functions:
	path-thru
	exists-thru?
	read-thru
	load-thru
	read-net

For that matter Volker, you could set view-root to the standard sandbox 
directory like this:
view-root: join to-rebol-file get-env "APPDATA" "REBOL"

Yes, but then i get security-questions.

And i dont like to rely on user.r . personal preference.

Yeah, those security questions.

As for relying on user.r, I prefer rebol.r for things like this.