Changing list to string

Q & A - getting started with Tinderbox
1

Hi,
quick question: I try to extract the first Surname from the $Authors and then put it into Devonthink URL schema together with $PublicationYear:

$MyString=$Authors.asString.extract((.*)(?=,));
$SearchDevonthink="x-devonthink://search?query=text:"+$MyString+"%20%28"+$PublicationYear;
$MyString=;

Result:

x-devonthink://search?query=text:%20%281998

the action code won’t extract the surname. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks!
Arek

2

Don’t clobber the value of $MyString (line 3); instead, look at it. What is the Tinderbox putting in $MyString?

My guess is that either $MyString is being set to “” — which would be consistent with your report —or that $SearchDevonthink is not an attribute: remember that attributes are case-sensitive. (The casing of DEVONthink has driven me up the wall for a decade.)

3

Thanks for your prompt reply.
$MyString is empty. I’m sure casing is not the issue here. I will think about other ways and report later.

4

What is contained in $Authors?

1 Like
5

My $Authors attribute is a system attribute of the Reference prototype. But your reply made me check my RegEx again and I found that I made mistake in action code syntax and regex itself. It’s working now, thanks!

$MyString=$Authors.asString.extract("^[^,]*");