Well, there's always the brute force approach: set theText to (text begin through (beginItal-1) of theText) & newString & (text (endItal+1) through end of theText) On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 4:19 PM, RJay Hansen <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Thanks for the suggestion Mark. Unfortunately, that generates the same > error--"Can't set text 23 thru 32 of theText...etc." > > RJay > > > On Sep 18, 2008, at 2:54 PM, Mark J. Reed wrote: > >> If theText is >> >> Here's some text with underscores (_like this_). >> >> Then the first underscore is at text position 36, but is contained >> within word 6. I'm guessing that beginItal holds the former value, >> not the latter, so you want "set text beginItal thru endItal of >> theText", not "set words ...". (Setting words would also replace the >> entire words "(_like" and "this_)" rather than leaving the parentheses >> alone.) >> >> On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 3:16 PM, RJay Hansen <[log in to unmask]> >> wrote: >>> >>> I'm writing a script that's intended to parse out text that is enclosed >>> within underscores (_like this_). I'm using Tex-Edit Plus and Smile. >>> >>> I'm putting text selected in Tex-Edit Plus into a variable then getting >>> what >>> I need working with the text in the variable. Once I have it, I want to >>> replace the string surrounded by the underscores (and including the >>> underscores) with the new string using this: >>> >>> set words beginItal thru endItal of theText to newString >>> >>> beginItal and endItal are the indexes of the underscores. theText is the >>> variable that the selection from the document is read into and newString >>> is >>> of course, the replacement string. >>> >>> Smile comes back with "Can't set words 23 thru 32 of theText (it puts the >>> actual string in the error message/not the variable name as shown here) >>> to >>> newString (and again, it puts the new string in the error message, not >>> the >>> variable name)". >>> >>> I haven't been able to figure out why I can't do this. Any help would be >>> appreciated. >>> >>> Thanks, >>> >>> RJay >>> >> >> >> >> -- >> Mark J. Reed <[log in to unmask]> > -- Mark J. Reed <[log in to unmask]>