FastScripts uses the same component instance of AppleScript for all scripts it runs, so things like text item delimiters are common to all scripts. Your code contains:
set selectedText to selectedList as text
That’s coercing a list to text, which means it will use whatever your TIDs are at that time.
Thanks Shane. Upon further investigation, I found a script, which I run by way of FastScripts, in which I had set the text item delimiter to a colon but had not reset the text item delimiter at the end of the script. As you surmise, that was the root cause of this issue. I fixed that and all is working well.
I greatly appreciate your help
FWIW, there are Comment and Uncomment commands built in to Script Debugger, with toolbar buttons.
I’ve been attempting to get this script to work with Script Debugger but without success. It appears that ‘content’ has to be changed to ‘source text’ and that ‘character range’ and ‘selection’ are supported but apparently ‘paragraph’ is not. Anyways, I thought someone who is familiar with scripting Script Debugger might be able to suggest a fix or perhaps advise that my script won’t work with Script Debugger.
Thanks for the help.
Your script would need to be modified to work with Script Debugger. But I’m not sure why you’d bother, given it has toolbar buttons and menu commands (which you can assign keyboard shortcuts to) that already do the job faster (and in some cases more cleanly).
Shane. I was aware there are toolbar buttons to add and remove comment characters but I didn’t know there are menu items for this. I tested these and they work great.
I do like my script’s ability to set the format of the comment characters, which I find to be a small convenience when editing a script. However, as things go, this is a minor matter and not worth the time it would appear to take to modify my script. I thought it might be an easy fix.
You can change that in Script Debugger by going to Preferences → Editing → Comment Inserts:.
Thanks Shane. I am totally embarrassed 
The native ability of Script Debugger to add and remove comments is great and that’s what I use. However, I wanted to learn a little about scripting Script Debugger and decided to rewrite the above script for use with Script Debugger just for learning purposes.
I’ve gotten everything fixed but cannot overcome one issue. I need to have the script select a particular paragraph (or range of paragraphs) of the script but can’t seem to manage that. The equivalent code in Script Editor would be:
tell application "Script Editor" to tell document 1
set selection to paragraph 2 -- reposition the selection
end tell
The above doesn’t work in Script Debugger and so I looked at the Script Debugger dictionary, which contains:
So, there does not appear to be a Script-Debugger equivalent to the Script Editor code and I thought perhaps I could get the character range of the numbered paragraph and then use that with the selection commmand but that didn’t work either.
Anyone have an ideas how to get the following to work:
tell application "Script Debugger" to tell document 1
set selection to paragraph 2 -- reposition the selection
end tell
Thanks for the help.
You need to get the source text as a string, and do your selection calculations based on that. It’s a bit tedious (but relatively fast because there are minimal Apple events).
Thanks Shane. That will be a fun project for me to work on.
The following version of my script works with Script Debugger.
-- revised 2022.07.26
on main()
set commentCharacters to "# " -- must begin with "--" or "#"
tell application "Script Debugger" to tell document 1
set allCode to source text
set characterRange to character range of selection
set characterRange to getCharacterRange(allCode, characterRange) of me
set selection to characterRange
set selectedCode to selection
end tell
set commentCharactersExist to false
set selectedCode to paragraphs of selectedCode
repeat with aParagraph in selectedCode
set theParagraph to contents of aParagraph
try
repeat while text 1 of theParagraph is in {tab, space}
set theParagraph to text 2 thru -1 of theParagraph
end repeat
on error
set theParagraph to ""
end try
set contents of aParagraph to theParagraph
if theParagraph begins with commentCharacters then set commentCharactersExist to true
end repeat
if commentCharactersExist then
set selectedCode to removeComment(commentCharacters, selectedCode)
else
set selectedCode to addComment(commentCharacters, selectedCode)
end if
set text item delimiters to {linefeed}
set selectedCode to selectedCode as text
set text item delimiters to {""}
tell application "Script Debugger" to tell document 1
set contents of selection to selectedCode
set selection to {item 1 of characterRange, 0} -- remove selection
-- set selection to {item 1 of characterRange, ((count selectedCode) + 1)} -- keep selection
end tell
end main
on addComment(commentCharacters, selectedCode)
if selectedCode = {} then return {commentCharacters}
repeat with aParagraph in selectedCode
set contents of aParagraph to (commentCharacters & aParagraph)
end repeat
return selectedCode
end addComment
on removeComment(commentCharacters, selectedCode)
set commentCharactersCount to ((count commentCharacters) + 1)
repeat with aParagraph in selectedCode
if aParagraph begins with commentCharacters then
try
set contents of aParagraph to text commentCharactersCount thru -1 of aParagraph
on error
set contents of aParagraph to ""
end try
end if
end repeat
return selectedCode
end removeComment
on getCharacterRange(allCode, characterRange)
set {c1, c2} to characterRange
set {c1, c2} to {c1, c1 + c2 - 1}
set c1Set to false
set runningTotal to 0
set allCode to paragraphs of allCode
repeat with aParagraph in allCode
set runningTotal to runningTotal + (count aParagraph) + 1
if c1Set = false and runningTotal ≥ c1 then
set c1 to runningTotal - (count aParagraph)
set c1Set to true
end if
if c1Set = true and runningTotal ≥ c2 then
set c2 to runningTotal
exit repeat
end if
end repeat
return {c1, (c2 - c1)}
end getCharacterRange
main()
The script contained below works with Script Debugger and is faster than the earlier version. The script does not add comment characters to lines that are blank or contain whitespace only, although this behavior is changed by editing the line that contains the following comment:
-- revised 2022.09.23
use framework "Foundation"
use scripting additions
on main()
set commentCharacters to "# " -- must begin with "--" or "#"
tell application id "com.latenightsw.ScriptDebugger8" to tell document 1
set allCode to source text
set {cr1, cr2} to character range of selection
set {pr1, pr2} to getParagraphRange(allCode, cr1, cr2) of me
set selection to {pr1, pr2}
set selectedCode to selection
end tell
set selectedCode to current application's NSString's stringWithString:selectedCode
set trimmedCode to getTrimmedCode(selectedCode)
set editedCode to getEditedCode(trimmedCode, commentCharacters)
tell application id "com.latenightsw.ScriptDebugger8" to tell document 1
set contents of selection to editedCode
set selection to {pr1, 0}
end tell
end main
on getParagraphRange(theString, cr1, cr2)
set theString to current application's NSString's stringWithString:theString
set paragraphRange to theString's paragraphRangeForRange:{(cr1 - 1), cr2}
set theParagraphs to {((paragraphRange's location) + 1), paragraphRange's |length|}
return theParagraphs
end getParagraphRange
on getTrimmedCode(theString)
set thePattern to "(?m)^\\h+"
set theString to (theString's stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:thePattern withString:"" options:1024 range:{0, theString's |length|()})
return theString
end getTrimmedCode
on getEditedCode(theString, theCharacters)
set thePattern to "(?m)^" & theCharacters
set theRange to theString's rangeOfString:thePattern options:1024
if theRange's |length|() > 0 then -- comment characters exist`
set theString to (theString's stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:thePattern withString:"" options:1024 range:{0, theString's |length|()})
else
set thePattern to "(?m)^(.+)$" -- change "+" to "*" to comment blank lines
set theString to (theString's stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:thePattern withString:(theCharacters & "$1") options:1024 range:{0, theString's |length|()})
end if
return theString as text
end getEditedCode
main()
The script contained below works with Script Editor and is faster than the earlier version. The script does not add comment characters to lines that are blank or contain whitespace only, although this behavior is changed by editing the line that contains the following comment:
This script contains a bug which occurs when a blank line is selected with the line ending but without any preceding or subsequent text. The impact of this bug is relatively small.
-- revised 2022.09.23
use framework "Foundation"
use scripting additions
on main()
set commentCharacters to "# " -- must begin with "--" or "#"
tell application "Script Editor" to tell document 1
set allCode to contents
set {cr1, cr2} to character range of selection
set {pr1, pr2} to getParagraphRange(allCode, cr1, cr2) of me
set selection to {pr1, pr2}
set selectedCode to contents of selection
end tell
set selectedCode to current application's NSString's stringWithString:selectedCode
set trimmedCode to getTrimmedCode(selectedCode)
set editedCode to getEditedCode(trimmedCode, commentCharacters)
tell application "Script Editor" to tell document 1
set contents of selection to editedCode
set selection to insertion point (pr1 + 1)
end tell
end main
on getParagraphRange(theString, cr1, cr2)
set cr2 to cr2 - cr1
set theString to current application's NSString's stringWithString:theString
set paragraphRange to theString's paragraphRangeForRange:{cr1, cr2}
set {pr1, pr2} to {(paragraphRange's location), paragraphRange's |length|}
return {pr1, pr2 + pr1}
end getParagraphRange
on getTrimmedCode(theString)
set thePattern to "(?m)^\\h+"
set theString to (theString's stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:thePattern withString:"" options:1024 range:{0, theString's |length|()})
return theString
end getTrimmedCode
on getEditedCode(theString, theCharacters)
set thePattern to "(?m)^" & theCharacters
set theRange to theString's rangeOfString:thePattern options:1024
if theRange's |length|() > 0 then -- comment characters exist
set theString to (theString's stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:thePattern withString:"" options:1024 range:{0, theString's |length|()})
else
set thePattern to "(?m)^(.+)$" -- change "+" to "*" to comment blank lines
set theString to (theString's stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:thePattern withString:(theCharacters & "$1") options:1024 range:{0, theString's |length|()})
end if
return theString as text
end getEditedCode
main()
This script toggles comment characters at the beginning of each paragraph of code selected in Script Debugger. If any paragraphs of selected code begin with comment characters, then comment characters are removed from the beginning of every paragraph of selected code. Otherwise, comment characters are added to the beginning of every paragraph of selected code. The script is similar to that contained in post 15 above except that:
White space at the beginning of paragraphs is retained until the script is compiled.
The amount of work done by the script is slightly reduced.
--revised 2024.06.07
use framework "Foundation"
use scripting additions
on main()
set commentCharacters to "--"
tell application id "com.latenightsw.ScriptDebugger8" to tell document 1
set allCode to source text
set {cr1, cr2} to character range of selection
set {pr1, pr2} to getParagraphRange(allCode, cr1, cr2) of me
set selection to {pr1, pr2}
set selectedCode to selection
end tell
set editedCode to getEditedCode(selectedCode, commentCharacters)
tell application id "com.latenightsw.ScriptDebugger8" to tell document 1
set contents of selection to editedCode
set selection to {pr1, 0}
end tell
end main
on getParagraphRange(theString, cr1, cr2)
set theString to current application's NSString's stringWithString:theString
set paragraphRange to theString's paragraphRangeForRange:{(cr1 - 1), cr2}
return {((paragraphRange's location) + 1), paragraphRange's |length|}
end getParagraphRange
on getEditedCode(theString, theCharacters)
set theString to current application's NSString's stringWithString:theString
set thePattern to "(?m)^(\\h*)" & theCharacters
set theRange to theString's rangeOfString:thePattern options:1024 --option 1024 is regex
if theRange's |length|() > 0 then --remove comment characters
set theString to (theString's stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:thePattern withString:"$1" options:1024 range:{0, theString's |length|()})
else --add comment characters
set thePattern to "(?m)^(\\h*)(\\S)"
set theString to (theString's stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:thePattern withString:("$1" & theCharacters & "$2") options:1024 range:{0, theString's |length|()})
end if
return theString as text
end getEditedCode
main()
The above script adds comment characters in the order of existing white space, comment characters, and code. The following replacement handler changes this order to comment characters, existing white space, and code.
on getEditedCode(theString, theCharacters)
set theString to current application's NSString's stringWithString:theString
set thePattern to "(?m)^(\\h*)" & theCharacters
set theRange to theString's rangeOfString:thePattern options:1024 --option 1024 is regex
if theRange's |length|() > 0 then --remove comment characters
set theString to (theString's stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:thePattern withString:"$1" options:1024 range:{0, theString's |length|()})
else --add comment characters
set thePattern to "(?m)^(\\h*\\S)"
set theString to (theString's stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:thePattern withString:(theCharacters & "$1") options:1024 range:{0, theString's |length|()})
end if
return theString as text
end getEditedCode
BTW, the above scripts do not add comment characters to the beginning of paragraphs that are empty or contain whitespace only. This is easily changed by editing the getEditedCode handler.
The following script is identical to that above except that it works with Script Editor:
--revised 2024.06.07
use framework "Foundation"
use scripting additions
on main()
set commentCharacters to "--"
tell application "Script Editor" to tell document 1
set allCode to contents
set {cr1, cr2} to character range of selection
set {pr1, pr2} to getParagraphRange(allCode, cr1, cr2) of me
set selection to {pr1, pr2}
set selectedCode to contents of selection
end tell
set editedCode to getEditedCode(selectedCode, commentCharacters)
tell application "Script Editor" to tell document 1
set contents of selection to editedCode
set selection to insertion point (pr1 + 1)
end tell
end main
on getParagraphRange(theString, cr1, cr2)
set cr2 to cr2 - cr1
set theString to current application's NSString's stringWithString:theString
set paragraphRange to theString's paragraphRangeForRange:{cr1, cr2}
set {pr1, pr2} to {(paragraphRange's location), paragraphRange's |length|}
return {pr1, pr2 + pr1}
end getParagraphRange
on getEditedCode(theString, theCharacters)
set theString to current application's NSString's stringWithString:theString
set thePattern to "(?m)^(\\h*)" & theCharacters
set theRange to theString's rangeOfString:thePattern options:1024 --option 1024 is regex
if theRange's |length|() > 0 then --remove comment characters
set theString to (theString's stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:thePattern withString:"$1" options:1024 range:{0, theString's |length|()})
else --add comment characters
set thePattern to "(?m)^(\\h*)(\\S)"
set theString to (theString's stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:thePattern withString:("$1" & theCharacters & "$2") options:1024 range:{0, theString's |length|()})
end if
return theString as text
end getEditedCode
main()
The following is similar to the Script Debugger script in post 17, differing primarily in that the code selection is retained after the comment characters are added or removed.
use framework "Foundation"
use scripting additions
on main()
set commentCharacters to "# " --edit as desired
tell application id "com.latenightsw.ScriptDebugger8" to tell document 1
set allCode to source text
set {cr1, cr2} to character range of selection
set {pr1, pr2} to getParagraphRange(allCode, cr1, cr2) of me
set selection to {pr1, pr2}
set selectedCode to selection
set {editedCode, editCount, editAction} to getEditedCode(selectedCode, commentCharacters) of me
set contents of selection to editedCode
set pr2 to (pr2 + ((count commentCharacters) * editCount * editAction))
set selection to {pr1, pr2} --replace pr2 with 0 to remove code selection
end tell
end main
on getParagraphRange(theString, cr1, cr2)
set theString to current application's NSString's stringWithString:theString
set paragraphRange to theString's paragraphRangeForRange:{(cr1 - 1), cr2}
return {((paragraphRange's location) + 1), paragraphRange's |length|}
end getParagraphRange
on getEditedCode(theString, theCharacters)
set theString to current application's NSMutableString's stringWithString:theString
set thePattern to "(?m)^(\\h*)" & theCharacters
set theRange to theString's rangeOfString:thePattern options:1024 --option 1024 is regex
if theRange's |length|() > 0 then --remove comment characters
set editCount to (theString's replaceOccurrencesOfString:thePattern withString:"$1" options:1024 range:{0, theString's |length|()})
set editAction to "-1"
else --add comment characters
set thePattern to "(?m)^(\\h*\\S)"
set editCount to (theString's replaceOccurrencesOfString:thePattern withString:(theCharacters & "$1") options:1024 range:{0, theString's |length|()})
set editAction to "1"
end if
return {theString as text, editCount, editAction}
end getEditedCode
main()
The Script Debugger scripts included above do not work correctly when the script being edited contains individual characters with more than one 16-bit code unit (typically emojis). The following script fixes this.
use framework "Foundation"
use scripting additions
on main()
set commentCharacters to "# " --edit as desired
tell application "Script Debugger" to tell document 1
set allCode to source text
set {cr1, cr2} to selection ASObjC range --uses 16-bit code units
set {pr1, pr2} to getParagraphRange(allCode, cr1, cr2) of me
set selection ASObjC range to {pr1, pr2}
set selectedCode to selection
set editedCode to getEditedCode(selectedCode, commentCharacters) of me
set contents of selection to editedCode
set selection ASObjC range to {pr1, 0}
end tell
end main
on getParagraphRange(theString, cr1, cr2)
set theString to current application's NSString's stringWithString:theString
set paragraphRange to theString's paragraphRangeForRange:{cr1, cr2} --uses 16-bit code units
return {paragraphRange's location, paragraphRange's |length|}
end getParagraphRange
on getEditedCode(theString, theCharacters)
set theString to current application's NSMutableString's stringWithString:theString
set removeCount to theString's replaceOccurrencesOfString:("(?m)^(\\h*)" & theCharacters) withString:"$1" options:1024 range:{0, theString's |length|()} --option 1024 is regex
if removeCount is greater than 0 then return theString as text
theString's replaceOccurrencesOfString:"(?m)^(\\h*\\S)" withString:(theCharacters & "$1") options:1024 range:{0, theString's |length|()}
return theString as text
end getEditedCode
main()
This script is the same as the above except that the code selection is not removed when the script ends.
use framework "Foundation"
use scripting additions
on main()
set commentCharacters to "# " --edit as desired
tell application "Script Debugger" to tell document 1
set allCode to source text
set {cr1, cr2} to selection ASObjC range --character range of current selection
set {pr1, pr2} to getParagraphRange(allCode, cr1, cr2) of me --paragraph range of current selection
set selection ASObjC range to {pr1, pr2}
set selectedCode to selection
set {editedCode, editCount, editAction} to getEditedCode(selectedCode, commentCharacters) of me
set contents of selection to editedCode
set pr2 to (pr2 + ((count commentCharacters) * editCount * editAction))
set selection ASObjC range to {pr1, pr2}
end tell
end main
on getParagraphRange(theString, cr1, cr2)
set theString to current application's NSString's stringWithString:theString
set paragraphRange to theString's paragraphRangeForRange:{cr1, cr2}
return {paragraphRange's location, paragraphRange's |length|}
end getParagraphRange
on getEditedCode(theString, theCharacters)
set theString to current application's NSMutableString's stringWithString:theString
set removeCount to theString's replaceOccurrencesOfString:("(?m)^(\\h*)" & theCharacters) withString:"$1" options:1024 range:{0, theString's |length|()}
if removeCount is greater than 0 then return {theString as text, removeCount, "-1"}
set addCount to theString's replaceOccurrencesOfString:"(?m)^(\\h*\\S)" withString:(theCharacters & "$1") options:1024 range:{0, theString's |length|()}
return {theString as text, addCount, "1"}
end getEditedCode
main()
@peavine Is it correct that to use this script, we need to attach it to a custom keyboard shortcut? Could you provide some instructions about this?
john202307. My script can be run by any method that is available, and this doesn’t have to involve a keyboard shortcut. The only requirement is that Script Editor or Script Debugger has to be frontmost when the script is run.
You can use Automator and the Shortcuts app to run a script by way of a keyboard shortcut, although it’s my experience that this doesn’t work very well. Many forum member with a lot of scripts seem to use an app for that purpose. I use FastScripts but I’m sure there are many other apps that work well. It should also be noted that Script Debugger has the native ability to run scripts by way of a keyboard shortcut.