7.5

It is always recommended that you choose a name that reflects the content or purpose of the element you are creating. A
meaningful name makes it easier to distinguish one element from another, and thus makes a document easier to maintain.
Data Types
What data types are available in PlanetPress Talk?
PlanetPress Talk provides the following data types:
Data Type Example
Integer 3
Measure or
Floating
Point
3,2300987
Currency 5.25
String Michel or $4,567.09
Boolean Yes or No
Color Array [100, 100, 0, 0] (for the CMYK color model)
Array
[Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday] (a seven-element array of type string) [12 18 103 57] (a
four-element array of type integer) [True True False False True False False] (a seven-element array
of type Boolean)
Directory
[c:\images\house.jpg c:\images\apt.jpg]
(a directory that contains two pathnames)
PlanetPress Talk strictly enforces its data types. For example, the show command accepts a string as its argument; an error
occurs if you attempt to send it an integer as an argument. You can use any of the conversion operators PlanetPress Talk pro-
vides to convert from one type to another. Thus the following show command is correct:
show(inttostr(subreccount()))
See "Conversion Operator Functions" (page n) for a complete list of the operators you can use to convert from one type to
another.
Integers
You use integers for counters and simple calculations. Integers have no decimal precision.
Integer Limit
Smallest on screen -2147483648
Largest on screen [phone]
Smallest PostScript-2147483648
Largest PostScript [phone]
Measures
Measures are real numbers and are often called floating-point numbers. The Measure unit has 8 significant digits and, in post-
script, is actually meant to calculate positions on a page, in inches. If your document requires complex mathematical com-
putations in which a greater decimal precision is critical, it is recommended you perform those calculations outside PlanetPress
and include the result in the input data. See "Calculations and Arithmetic in PlanetPress Talk" (page 239).
Measure Limit
Smallest on screen 1.5 * 10
-45
0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000015
Largest on screen 3.4 * 10
38
340 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000
©2010 Objectif Lune Inc - 222 -