Puzzling Automator Script Behavior

Scripting Forums Automator
,
#1

Some unexpected Automator behavior is baffling me. I’m hoping that smarter, more experienced scripters might help me figure out what is going on.

Running the following script, that shifts a text into uppercase, in AppleScript Editor,

set input to "abcabc"
return my uppercase(input)


to uppercase(text_to_process)
	set lowercasestring to "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzéèà òùìâêîôäëïöüæœãõáăȧéíĩ"
	set uppercasestring to "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZÉÈÀÒÙÌÂÊÎÔÄËÏÖÜÆŒÃÕÁĂȦÉÍĨ"
	set tid to text item delimiters
	set text item delimiters to ""
	
	repeat with loop from 1 to count lowercasestring
		set the lower_letter to item loop of lowercasestring
		set the text item delimiters to the lower_letter
		set the character_list to the text items of the text_to_process
		set the text item delimiters to item loop of the uppercasestring
		set the text_to_process to the character_list as text
	end repeat
	set text item delimiters to tid
	return the text_to_process
end uppercase

produces the result I expected: “ABCABC”

However, running the following similar script in Automator,

on run {input, parameters}
	
	return my uppercase(input)
end run

to uppercase(text_to_process)
	set lowercasestring to "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzéèà òùìâêîôäëïöüæœãõáăȧéíĩ"
	set uppercasestring to "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZÉÈÀÒÙÌÂÊÎÔÄËÏÖÜÆŒÃÕÁĂȦÉÍĨ"
	set tid to text item delimiters
	set text item delimiters to ""
	
	repeat with loop from 1 to count lowercasestring
		set the lower_letter to item loop of lowercasestring
		set the text item delimiters to the lower_letter
		set the character_list to the text items of the text_to_process
		set the text item delimiters to item loop of the uppercasestring
		set the text_to_process to the character_list as text
	end repeat
	set text item delimiters to tid
	return the text_to_process
end uppercase

with the input “abcabc”, this Automator action produces the result “aBCaBC”, which I find baffling.

To add to the confusion, if I add two ‘do nothing’ lines to the script in Automator,

on run {input, parameters}
	
	return my uppercase(input)
end run

to uppercase(text_to_process)
	set lowercasestring to "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzéèà òùìâêîôäëïöüæœãõáăȧéíĩ"
	set uppercasestring to "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZÉÈÀÒÙÌÂÊÎÔÄËÏÖÜÆŒÃÕÁĂȦÉÍĨ"
	set tid to text item delimiters
	set text item delimiters to ""
	
	set the character_list to the text items of the text_to_process -- DO NOTHING
	set the text_to_process to the character_list as text -- DO NOTHING
	
	repeat with loop from 1 to count lowercasestring
		set the lower_letter to item loop of lowercasestring
		set the text item delimiters to the lower_letter
		set the character_list to the text items of the text_to_process
		set the text item delimiters to item loop of the uppercasestring
		set the text_to_process to the character_list as text
	end repeat
	set text item delimiters to tid
	return the text_to_process

the script works, namely, the input “abcabc” produces the result “ABCABC”.

Can anyone figure out what is going on here?

Model: Macbook
AppleScript: 2.3?
Browser: Safari 531.21.10
Operating System: Mac OS X (10.6)

#2

Hi,

the difference is:
In the first script input is an string
In the second script input is a list (of strings)

return my uppercase(item 1 of input)

should work

This does the same task with a shell script


on run {input, parameters}
	set theText to quoted form of item 1 of input
	return do shell script "/bin/echo -n " & theText & " | /usr/bin/tr a-z'éèà òùìâêîôäëïöüæœãõáăȧéíĩ' A-Z'ÉÈÀÒÙÌÂÊÎÔÄËÏÖÜÆŒÃÕÁĂȦÉÍĨ'"
end run
#3

Thank you. That clear it up.

I have just been informed that my string is missing at least the following two characters “ÿ”, “ñ” and their uppercase versions “Ÿ”, “Ñ”. I notice that your shell script approach has trouble with the “ÿ”.

Does “ß” have an uppercase form?

#4

No, normally ß will be replaced by SS