Replacing the first two characters in a paragraph

Scripting Forums AppleScript | Mac OS X
#1

I want to replace the first two characters of the paragraph “para”, it works in the script that I have included below by twice replacing the first character with “”. I would like to learn a better way to do this, any advice would be appreciated.

tell application "Pages"
	activate
	tell front document
		set a to paragraphs of body text
		set paraNumber to 1 -- Initialize paragraph counter
		
		repeat with para in a
			-- Check if paragraph starts with "#"
			if (text of para starts with "#") then
				-- Format the paragraph
				tell paragraph paraNumber of the body text
					set font to "Arial Black"
					set size to 14
					
					set (the first character) to ""
					set (the first character) to "" --Second instance is neccessary because i cant get it to work in one go
				end tell
			end if
			set paraNumber to paraNumber + 1 -- Increment paragraph counter
		end repeat
	end tell
end tell
#2 
set characters 1 thru 2 to ""

** EDIT** seems to have problems
try this…

tell application "Pages"
	activate
	tell front document
		set a to paragraphs of body text
		set paraNumber to 1 -- Initialize paragraph counter
		
		repeat with para in a
			-- Check if paragraph starts with "#"
			if (text of para starts with "#") then
				-- Format the paragraph
				set myText to paragraph paraNumber of the body text
				tell me to set myText to text 3 thru -1 of myText
				set paragraph paraNumber of the body text to myText
				tell paragraph paraNumber of the body text
					set font to "Arial Black"
					set size to 14
				end tell
			end if
			set paraNumber to paraNumber + 1 -- Increment paragraph counter
		end repeat
	end tell
end tell

To do multiple paragraphs do this…

tell application "Pages"
	activate
	tell front document
		set a to paragraphs of body text
		set paraNumber to 1 -- Initialize paragraph counter
		
		repeat with paraNumber from 1 to count a
			set para to item paraNumber of a -- Check if paragraph starts with "#"
			if (text of para starts with "#") then
				-- Format the paragraph
				set myText to paragraph paraNumber of the body text
				tell me to set myText to text 3 thru -1 of myText
				set paragraph paraNumber of the body text to myText
				tell paragraph paraNumber of the body text
					set font to "Arial Black"
					set size to 14
				end tell
			end if
			set paraNumber to paraNumber + 1 -- Increment paragraph counter
		end repeat
	end tell
end tell
#3

Thanks, that works for me! :smiley:

I initially tried set characters 1 thru 2 to "" but it removes 3 characters.

Any idea why that happens?

#4

For me it removed 2 characters but not the 1st and 2nd character, but the 1st and 3rd instead.

#5

Hi.

I’m seeing this too with set characters 1 thru 2 to "". I’m not sure why. Possibly each character in the range is set to “” individually [*], in which case the setting of the first character to “” would immediately make the second character the first and the third character the second. So it would be what was originally the third character that got set to “” as character 2. It’s a bit surprising that it doesn’t happen when delete is used instead:

tell application "Pages"
	activate
	tell body text of document 1
		tell (paragraphs where it begins with "#")
			-- Do these first while the paragraphs still begin with "#"!
			set font to "Arial Black"
			set size to 14
			-- NOW delete the "#" and following character.
			delete (characters 1 thru 2)
		end tell
	end tell
end tell

[*] EDIT: Yes. This is in fact what happens, as shown if the characters are set to, say, “X” or to “Hello” instead of to “”.