How to Debug NSReceiverEvaluationScriptError

Scripting Forums AppleScript Studio & Xcode
#1

I think they’re are few things more annoying in life than a non-specific error (except a box of tangled coat hangers perhaps) but NSReceiverEvaluationScriptError seems to appear again and again and again without any indication of wherethe error was triggered.

I have an application that works perfectly well. It uses Open Source apps such as ffmpeg and imagemagick to take input source files and processes them, puts water marks on them, presizes them, zips them up and generally does everything I want. The only problem is that code changes or changes to the NIB seem to nearly always result in NSReceiverEvaluationScriptError errors.

Here’s the latest headache:

I have a perfectly well functioning app, latest release is version 2.2. I’m just making some upgrades to Version 3.0 and I make a simple change to the NIB file. I take a set of NIB instances and put them in an NSTabView using the “Layout >> Make subview of >> Tab View” command. I then Build and Run and I get an NSReceiverEvaluationScriptError. I wasn’t suprised by that. I think there are almost certainly references that are now broken but it would certainly be useful, actually ESSENTIAL, if I could isolate where those broken references are.

The documentation for Applescript Studio is dreadful. There doesn’t even seem to be a good list of available commands, complete with example implementations as there is say for PHP or any other technical languages? Is there one somewhere? I’d be eternally grateful if someone could point one out. I’m sure that I can’t be alone in using the ASS example applications to get my code to a certain point before hitting a brick wall when it comes to making any changes?

This is a big ramble but my main question is:

“HOW DO YOU DEBUG NSReceiverEvaluationScriptError Errors?”

:frowning:

ahh and a second question.

Is there an IRC channel for ASS or even AS?

#2

I am not sure if this helps out at all because it is a fairly elementary way to debug but what I usually do is use the “log” function to determine where the script got to before it failed.

Ex.

—>your reference to IB control
Log “1”
—>your reference to IB control
Log “2”
—>your reference to IB control
Log “3”
—>your reference to IB control
Log “4”
—>your reference to IB control
Log “5”

This way I can tell that if up to 3 was logged it was the 4th reference that is broke. Once it is debugged I then take out all the log statements.

#3

Thanks Dallas,

That’s an interesting idea. That’s sort of the root I’ve been heading down but I would have thought that there was some debug functionality to do this?

Anyone?