World: r3wp

that is my primary need or want to use rebol for, is to manipulate 
text. I like perl, but  love rebol's small footprint, if it can give 
me the same power of perl in a much smaller package, with a gui, 
that is all the better. I could potentially replace access and a 
lot of proprietary tools with a small rebol view application.

I like how rebol handles tagged data, xml, html, etc.

I am surprised save can't serialize rebol datastructures in xml formats

I dunno maybe I am being anal, or stupid, or just plain unreasonable. 
But this sort of irked me, when I found people offering a solution, 
and it was so simple as to have just been a part of the darn language 
from the beginning.

I hope more documentation on view itself also debuts

actually it was Jaime

substring: func [
    [catch]
    source [string!]
    spec [block!]
    /local start stop rule
][
    rule: [set start integer! '.. set stop integer!]
    unless parse spec rule [
        throw make error! "Invalid range spec."
    ]
    copy/part skip source start stop
]

this was in my response to my suggestion that we adopt a python type 
syntax for parts of series

substring "abcd" [2 .. 3]

so skip is skipping into the string, then it is copying part of that 
string starting from that position to the end?

Oddly enough, *I've* never needed substring type functionality in 
REBOL. Might be due to the fact that REBOL's multitude of datatypes 
reduces the need somewhat (i.e. in another language you may have 
to manipulate numbers / strings to / from dollar / date / time formats, 
whereas in REBOL I tend to convert via the to-* functions).

well, one thing I've wondered is how to add weeks, months, years, 
etc. to dates

Jarod - yes.

I like that function a bit more Graham, I basically think I understand 
what that is doig

the ".." is synatactic sugar.

doing

having to write a function to do that is a pain, but I can probably 
live with it, knowing exactly what it is doing

I mean, all languages have quirks

hehe

I don't use substr much at all either .. but your complaint was one 
I also felt :)

I mean, there are times when parse will work

but honestly, I could actually see parse having the ability to substring

I am surprised it doesn't

how can you do more with dates than just add days to them?

So why doesn't someone write a .r file you can run that adds common 
functions for other languages (i.e. basic.r would have 'substr,

I guess there are several ways it could be implemented

user.r ?

putting it in user.r?

Someone (or a group of someones) should write a .r file for the common 
languages (i.e. basic.r would include 'substr, 'peek, 'poke, etc.; 
rexx.r would include 'mid, etc.).  That way, new users from other 
languages could move into Rebol with the knowledge they already have. 
 Of course, the script flow would be different, but their favorite 
functions would be available, and they could see how to implement 
their favorite functions natively using 'source.  There could also 
be a %c.r for those coming straight from C. :-)

and things like .. cd, dir and other common dos functions

Ah, but to implement dos.r, you would have to remove about 90% of 
Rebol's functionality ;-)

Just kidding...I was being mean about how bad DOS really is as a 
scripting language. :-)

Jarod...I guess you are asking about how to add to dates.  Here is 
an example:

>> b: now/date
== 27-Mar-2006
>> b/month: b/month + 6
== 9
>> b
== 27-Sep-2006

that adds months, what about weeks?

hmm

>> week: 7 ;Defining a "constant" here
== 7
>> b/date: b/date + (6 * week)
== 8-Nov-2006

hmm

I guess I didn't need to use 'b/date, just 'b would have worked.

>> b: b + (6 * week)
== 8-Nov-2006

yeah, but I mean, let's say I took two dates, and I wanted to know 
the number of months between them, the date/month thing doesn't work

maybe if I take the number of days and divide by 12

use 'difference to get the difference between two dates

A pretty close estimate is the following: date2 - date1 / 365.25 
* 12

interesting

difference

so that returns results in hours?

Difference returns the difference in hours.

yeah, and I could continue converting that

hmm

>> ( difference now/date 1-Jan-2006 ) / 24:00 / 30
== 2.86666666666667

still dividing by 30 isn't exactly accurate