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Switch!

 [1/17] from: sharriff::aina::med-iq::de at: 19-Nov-2000 5:07


Hi REBOL-List! given this code snippet:: titles: ["Akne" %basis14.htm " Alkoholischer Leberschaden" %basis15.htm " Alzheimer" %basis16.htm ] foreach [x y] titles [ switch second :x [ #"a" [either exists? %a.html [save %a.txt test ][print "a.html exists!"]] #"b" [ print "do that"] #"c" [] #"d" [print "hoo" ] #"e" [print "gotcha"] #"f" [] #"g" [] #"h" [] #"i" [] #"j" [] #"k" [] #"l" [] #"m" [] #"n" [print "bogey"] #"o" [print "stark"] #"p" [Print "balloo"] #"q" [] #"r" [] #"s" [] #"t" [] #"v" [] #"v" [] #"w" [] #"x" [] #"y" [] #"z" []]] If the block "titles" is not too big (30-40 entries) the snippet runs fine, but the actual list generates more than 180 enties, the script runs but I get this error: ** Script Error: Out of range or past end. ** Where: switch second :x [ Can someone tell me what is wrong? Sharriff Aina med.iq information & quality in healthcare AG

 [2/17] from: al:bri:xtra at: 19-Nov-2000 20:01


Sharriff wrote:
> If the block "titles" is not too big (30-40 entries) the snippet runs
fine, but the actual list generates more than 180 entries, the script runs but I get this error:
> ** Script Error: Out of range or past end. > ** Where: switch second :x [ > > Can someone tell me what is wrong?
There's something wrong with your big block pointed to by 'titles. Perhaps one of the titles only has one letter in it? After all, this statement: second :x uses the "second" letter of the strings, rather than the first. It should really be: first x You also don't need the ":" on 'x as it looks like you're switching on strings only. You've got some extra space in your strings, so 'trim it off. Like: first trim x But that's in the wrong place. The code that generates the block should have trimmed it off in the first place and done it's job correctly.
> #"z" []]]
Plus, there's an awfully lot of space in the above line! Wouldn't just one tab or four spaces do? Also, why use 'x and 'y as names? Why not 'heading and 'file? Or something else more descriptive? I hope that helps! Andrew Martin Being right for a change... ICQ: 26227169 http://members.nbci.com/AndrewMartin/ -><-

 [3/17] from: al:bri:xtra at: 19-Nov-2000 20:21


For why this:
> foreach [x y]
is bad, check out: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?MeaningfulNames Andrew Martin ICQ: 26227169 http://members.nbci.com/AndrewMartin/

 [4/17] from: brett:codeconscious at: 20-Nov-2000 11:26


Hi Sharriff, Maybe one of your titles is only one character is length or is empty? Brett.
>> second "ab"
== #"b"
>> second "a"
** Script Error: Out of range or past end. ** Where: second "a" Brett.

 [5/17] from: sharriff:aina:med-iq at: 20-Nov-2000 7:25


Thanks Andrew! Sharriff Aina med.iq information & quality in healthcare AG "Andrew Martin" An: <[rebol-list--rebol--com]> <[Al--Bri--xtra]. Kopie: co.nz> Thema: [REBOL] Re: Switch! Gesendet von: rebol-bounce@ rebol.com 19.11.00 20:21 Bitte antworten an rebol-list For why this:
> foreach [x y]
is bad, check out: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?MeaningfulNames Andrew Martin ICQ: 26227169 http://members.nbci.com/AndrewMartin/

 [6/17] from: sharriff:aina:med-iq at: 20-Nov-2000 7:31


On the spot Brett, Andrew also hinted at this, I´ve corrected the code to cater for this situation Thanks! Sharriff Aina "Brett Handley" <[brett--codecons] An: <[rebol-list--rebol--com]> cious.com> Kopie: Gesendet von: Thema: [REBOL] Re: Switch! [rebol-bounce--re] bol.com 20.11.00 00:26 Bitte antworten an rebol-list Hi Sharriff, Maybe one of your titles is only one character is length or is empty? Brett.
>> second "ab"
== #"b"
>> second "a"
** Script Error: Out of range or past end. ** Where: second "a" Brett.

 [7/17] from: sharriff:aina:med-iq at: 20-Nov-2000 7:52


I´m almost there Brett. Michael, Andrew although I´ve solved the problem using some extensive code, I wonder if there is a cleaner or shorter way to do this (see code below) ; creates subindexes from the first characters foreach [title file] titles [ switch first title [ #"a" [clear sub-list ; temp-html: copy sub-toc-html-template append sub-list rejoin [{<a href="} file {" target ="touchscreencontent"><img src="./images/round-button.jpg" border="0" /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;}title {</a>}] append temp-html newline append temp-html sub-list append temp-html sub-toc-html-stub write/append %aa.html temp-html] #"b" [clear sub-list ; temp-html: copy sub-toc-html-template append sub-list rejoin [{<a href="} file {" target ="touchscreencontent"><img src="./images/round-button.jpg" border="0" /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;}title {</a>}] append temp-html newline append temp-html sub-list append temp-html sub-toc-html-stub write/append %bb.html temp-html] and so on and so forth.....to character Z the links to the files and buttons are added correctly, but the tags of the HTML template are added also too, so the files (%aa.html, %bb.html e.t.c) end up having multiple <head>, <body> <title> e.tc. tags. How do code a method to execute only once in this situation? The way I´ve solved it atthe moment is to define alphabet blocks at the moment with the top of the HTML template in them and upon an occuring switch, the links get added to the respective alphabet blocks. The alphabet blocks are then written one by one to disk. I´m not sure if the script is economical with memory,( i´ve defined more than 20 blocks!) I would like than one of you should look it over, but it so large and I think it might be impolite to post it here. Thanks in advance Sharriff Aina

 [8/17] from: al:bri:xtra at: 20-Nov-2000 22:02


This should be a function:
> ; temp-html: copy sub-toc-html-template > append sub-list rejoin [{<a href="} file {" target
<<quoted lines omitted: 4>>
> append temp-html sub-toc-html-stub > write/append %aa.html temp-html]
Repeat 26 times after me, "Write everything once and only once". Letter: function [Text [string!] File [file!]] [Page][ Page: copy sub-toc-html-template ; your code here... ] Andrew Martin ICQ: 26227169 http://members.nbci.com/AndrewMartin/

 [9/17] from: sharriff:aina:med-iq at: 20-Nov-2000 9:22


Thanks Andrew I ´ll take a look at the Wiki in a short while. Excuse me for being slow, but I don´t understand why I have to pass a file as an argument, and I dont know how to cater for the case of multiple links? I´ve coded something like this to break out of this problem -------------------------------------------------- these lines at the beginning ; ----------- containers for the final sub HTML files a: copy sub-toc-html-template ;creates subindexes from the first characters foreach [title file] titles [ switch first title [ #"a" [clear sub-list ; temp-html: copy sub-toc-html-template append sub-list rejoin [{<a href="} file {" target ="touchscreencontent"><img src="./images/round-button.jpg" border="0" /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;}title {</a>}] append a newline append a sub-list] and so on till #"z" then these lines follow: ; ----------- code lines that creates the individual sub-TOC pages append a sub-toc-html-stub write %aa.html a and so on for every letter I´ve done it this way so that I can iterate for every occurence of a title with with the same character. This is appended to a block (a: [] for example) containing the the top of the template, the links are added to the middle and the end of the template is appended and the file is then written. step 1: sub-toc-html-template step 2: add all found tiltes and links step 3: append sub-toc-html-stub step 4: write to disk could you show me how to implement your function to piece together the links and HTML template together? Much thanks Sharriff Aina "Andrew Martin" An: <[rebol-list--rebol--com]> <[Al--Bri--xtra]. Kopie: co.nz> Thema: [REBOL] Re: Antwort: Switch! Gesendet von: rebol-bounce@ rebol.com 20.11.00 22:02 Bitte antworten an rebol-list This should be a function:
> ; temp-html: copy sub-toc-html-template > append sub-list rejoin [{<a href="} file {" target
<<quoted lines omitted: 4>>
> append temp-html sub-toc-html-stub > write/append %aa.html temp-html]
Repeat 26 times after me, "Write everything once and only once". Letter: function [Text [string!] File [file!]] [Page][ Page: copy sub-toc-html-template ; your code here... ] Andrew Martin ICQ: 26227169 http://members.nbci.com/AndrewMartin/

 [10/17] from: al:bri:xtra at: 20-Nov-2000 21:56


> I´m almost there Brett. Michael, Andrew although I´ve solved the problem
using some extensive code, I wonder if there is a cleaner or shorter way to do this (see code below) See: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?OnceAndOnlyOnce Andrew Martin I shall say zis only once... ICQ: 26227169 http://members.nbci.com/AndrewMartin/

 [11/17] from: al:bri:xtra at: 20-Nov-2000 23:04


These lines:
> [clear sub-list > ; temp-html: copy sub-toc-html-template
<<quoted lines omitted: 3>>
> append a newline > append a sub-list]
are in a block. What's in a block can be put into a function. For example: A-function: func [][ clear sub-list temp-html: copy sub-toc-html-template append sub-list rejoin [ {<a href="} file {" target =" touchscreencontent"> <img src="./images/round-button.jpg" border="0" /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; }title {</a>} ] append a newline append a sub-list ] Repeat for a total of 26 times. Notice that these 26 functions have duplicated words inside them. The parts that are different about each function can be supplied as values for the function. For example: Michelle: func [a] [ append a reduce [ "." newline "This is on the end of a." ] ]
>> Michelle "I shall say zis only once"
== {I shall say zis only once. This is on the end of a.} Andrew Martin It grows late... ICQ: 26227169 http://members.nbci.com/AndrewMartin/

 [12/17] from: brett::codeconscious::com at: 21-Nov-2000 1:50

Re: Antwort: Switch! (LONG)


Hi Sharriff, First off, read Andrew's post that quotes Michelle "I shall say zis only once", then come back to this post. I assume that you do not have a deadline that you are about to get deaded by :) If you do, mention it. That said, lets break down your problem again. Here's how I see it: you need to index your files by a character you need to generate an html page for each index So far your script tries to do both things at once, and I think this makes it more complex. That is why you needed the switch statement and the /append refinement to the write function. Let's look at the second part of your problem - generating the pages. Here's a contrived example ; A function that generates a single html page as a string. generate-my-page: function [ page-number some-pagerefs [block!] ][html-page][ html-page: copy {} append html-page reduce [<h1> "This is page " page-number </h1>] foreach pageref some-pagerefs [ append html-page <p> append html-page build-tag reduce ['a 'href pageref] append html-page pageref append html-page [</a> </p>] ] RETURN html-page ] ; A function that writes an single html page. write-my-page: function [ page-number some-pagerefs [block!] ][page-string][ page-string: GENERATE-MY-PAGE page-number some-pagerefs insert head page-string "<HTML><BODY>" insert tail page-string "<p><b>Generated by Rebol</b></p></BODY></HTML>" write (join %test-page- [page-number %.html]) page-string ] ; Main script write-my-page 1 ["test-page-2.html" "test-page-3.html"] write-my-page 2 ["test-page-3.html"] write-my-page 3 ["test-page-3.html" "test-page-2.html" "test-page-1.html"] I could have had one function do what generate-my-page and write-my-page is doing. But I wanted to demonstrate how powerful nested functions can be. In this case write-my-page calls generate-my-page to make the body of each page. write-my-page then adds the html and body tags around it and adds the Generated by Rebol message. It finally writes the page by calculating a file name. Ok next problem, indexing by the first character. The hardest part is working out how to store your results so that you can use them with the other function (above). To keep things straight forward I'll use two blocks. The first block (index-block) will be the characters the second block (data-block) is a block of blocks - one block for each character that will store all the items. I'll create a function that will build these two blocks from data given to it. But, before the function returns the result it will make a single block of that interleaves the first two blocks. Why? - it makes it easy to use a foreach [col1 col2] later. Here is the function. Admittedly it looks intimidating to start with, but I think it becomes clear with a little study. If not, yell :) index-some-data: function [ data [series!] ] [ index-block data-block result-block indexed-item index-number ] [ ; Create the blocks index-block: copy [] data-block: copy [] ; Index all the items in the data. foreach item data [ either indexed-item: find index-block first item [ ; Yippe - there is an entry for this - just add it to the list index-number: index? indexed-item insert/only tail (pick data-block index-number) item ] [ ; It wasn't found - we'll have to add it and add new list too. ; Note that it is critical that we add to both blocks in the same order. insert tail index-block first item insert/only tail data-block reduce [item] ;item inside a new block ] ] ; Well everything is indexed now. ; We will reformat to make a nice result. ; We just merge the two blocks in order. result-block: make block! (multiply 2 length? index-block) for index-number 1 length? index-block 1 [ append result-block (pick index-block index-number) append/only result-block (pick data-block index-number) ] ; Drum roll... RETURN result-block ] I can now use this function with the others to do something quite powerful. foreach [char file-list] index-some-data read %. [ write-my-page char file-list ] Which is probably fairly close to what you want to do. How did we get here? (1) Seperated the tasks we needed to do. (2) Created functions for these tasks and a data structure that would communicate effectively between the functions. There was nothing wrong in with your solution of one script that chugs through the data appending as it went to the appropriate file. Indeed that might be an optimal solution for some applications. I wanted to show how a more structured approach can help solve the problem by breaking it into smaller (more achievable) pieces. The other interesting point is that my index function is not only useful for this problem, but is quite possibly useful for other problems too. Actually write-my-page might be handy elsewhere as well. That is what functions are good at.
>> index-some-data ["here" "are" "some" "strings"]
== [#"h" ["here"] #"a" ["are"] #"s" ["some" "strings"]]
>> index-some-data [10-jun-2000 11-aug-2001 2-feb-2000 31-dec-2002]
== [2000 [10-Jun-2000 2-Feb-2000] 2001 [11-Aug-2001] 2002 [31-Dec-2002]] Brett. It's grown late here too :) ----- Original Message ----- From: <[Sharriff--Aina--med-iq--de]> To: <[rebol-list--rebol--com]> Sent: Monday, November 20, 2000 6:52 PM Subject: [REBOL] Antwort: Switch! I´m almost there Brett. Michael, Andrew although I´ve solved the problem using some extensive code, I wonder if there is a cleaner or shorter way to do this (see code below) ; creates subindexes from the first characters foreach [title file] titles [ switch first title [ #"a" [clear sub-list ; temp-html: copy sub-toc-html-template append sub-list rejoin [{<a href="} file {" target ="touchscreencontent"><img src="./images/round-button.jpg" border="0" /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;}title {</a>}] append temp-html newline append temp-html sub-list append temp-html sub-toc-html-stub write/append %aa.html temp-html] #"b" [clear sub-list ; temp-html: copy sub-toc-html-template append sub-list rejoin [{<a href="} file {" target ="touchscreencontent"><img src="./images/round-button.jpg" border="0" /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;}title {</a>}] append temp-html newline append temp-html sub-list append temp-html sub-toc-html-stub write/append %bb.html temp-html] and so on and so forth.....to character Z the links to the files and buttons are added correctly, but the tags of the HTML template are added also too, so the files (%aa.html, %bb.html e.t.c) end up having multiple <head>, <body> <title> e.tc. tags. How do code a method to execute only once in this situation? The way I´ve solved it atthe moment is to define alphabet blocks at the moment with the top of the HTML template in them and upon an occuring switch, the links get added to the respective alphabet blocks. The alphabet blocks are then written one by one to disk. I´m not sure if the script is economical with memory,( i´ve defined more than 20 blocks!) I would like than one of you should look it over, but it so large and I think it might be impolite to post it here. Thanks in advance Sharriff Aina

 [13/17] from: sharriff:aina:med-iq at: 20-Nov-2000 15:34


Thanks Brett! Speaking of a deadline, the indexer is supposed to produce index pages tommorow!!! for an application thats going to be used in a exibition, my boss was a little worried, but I finished coding this morning 3.00AM, I would definately have to recode it after the exibition according to your examples. I just went through your code (have to prepare a lot of things for the exibition) and saw directly that your code would need thorough study. I apologise if this very big script has annoyed anyone, but I am curious to see how way off I was with my code. Thanks Brett and Andrew for the kick in the right direction. The indexer, an index CGI utility for indexing HTML for a touchscreen application #!c:\rebol\rebol.exe -cs REBOL [] Print "Content-Type: text/html ^/^/" ; code to decode the HTML form comes here!! ; ------------- initialize containers toc-list: make block! 0 temp-block:make block! 0 title-list: make block! 0 file-list: make block! 0 ; contains the raw files sorted-files: make block! 0 ; finally contains only HTML/HTM files file-dir: make block! 0 sub-list: make block! 0 ; contains links to sublists titles: make block! 0 ; contains Titles and file names char-list: make block! 0 finished-links: make block! 0 temp-html: make block! 0 ; ------------------------- individual sub list container blocks a: make block! 0 b: make block! 0 c: make block! 0 ; all the way to Z...... z: make block! 0 ; ----------------------- sub TOC HTML template sub-toc-html-template: { <html> <head> <style type="text/css"> a {font-family: Verdana; font-size: 18pt} h2 { font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt} h3.c1 {font-family: Verdana} p {font-family: Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetic; font-size: 15pt} td {font-family: Verdana; font-size: 18pt} body {background-color: #FFFFE0} </style> <title> Sub-TOC </title> </head> <body> <table border="0 cellpadding="0" cellspacing="2" width="700">} sub-toc-html-stub: { </tr> </table> </body> </html>} ; ----------- containers for the final sub HTML files a: copy sub-toc-html-template b: copy sub-toc-html-template ;...... all the way to Z, you must have guessed by now! z: copy sub-toc-html-template ;----------------- Code begin -------------- ;___________________________________________ ;----------------- function for user directory selection select-dir: func [ module-name ] [prefix: "../medintouch/modules/" change-dir (to-file join prefix user-dir)] either exists? toc.html [ write %toc.html main-html-toc][print "ERROR! TOC is missing"] ; read and store all files in "file-list" file-list: read sort %./ ; selects all HTML or HTM files and stores them in a separate list foreach file file-list [either find/any file ".ht?" [append sorted-files :file][save %non-html-files.txt :file]] ; parse the titles from the html and htm files and store the titles ;foreach file sorted-files [temp-file: read file ; parse temp-file [any [thru "<title>" copy title-list to "</title>"] to end] ; append titles title-list ; append titles file] ; taking care of medintouch version bug (bad HTML) foreach file sorted-files [temp-file: read file parse temp-file [any [thru "<title> Patienteninformierung zu" copy title-list to "</title>"] to end] append titles title-list append titles file] ; creates subindexes from the first characters foreach [title file] titles [ switch second title [ #"a" [clear sub-list ; temp-html: copy sub-toc-html-template append sub-list rejoin [{<tr><td>}{<a href="} file {" target ="touchscreencontent"><img src="./images/round-button.jpg" border="0" /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;}title {</a>}{</td><td>&nbsp;</td>}] append a newline append a sub-list] #"b" [clear sub-list ; temp-html: copy sub-toc-html-template append sub-list rejoin [{<tr><td>}{<a href="} file {" target ="touchscreencontent"><img src="./images/round-button.jpg" border="0" /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;}title {</a>}{</td><td>&nbsp;</td>}] append b newline append b sub-list] #"c" [clear sub-list ; temp-html: copy sub-toc-html-template append sub-list rejoin [{<tr><td>}{<a href="} file {" target ="touchscreencontent"><img src="./images/round-button.jpg" border="0" /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;}title {</a>}{</td><td>&nbsp;</td>}] append c newline append c sub-list] ; all the way to Z.------------ #"z" [clear sub-list ; temp-html: copy sub-toc-html-template append sub-list rejoin [{<tr><td>}{<a href="} file {" target ="touchscreencontent"><img src="./images/round-button.jpg" border="0" /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;}title {</a>}{</td><td>&nbsp;</td>}] append z newline append z sub-list]]] ; ----------- code lines that creates the individual sub-TOC pages append a sub-toc-html-stub write %aa.html a append b sub-toc-html-stub write %bb.html b ; all the way to Z.... This script takes a directory of HTML pages, extracts the titles and creates an index page of links for each alphabet.. The pages are used in a touchscreen application. Sharriff Aina med.iq information & quality in healthcare AG

 [14/17] from: brett:codeconscious at: 21-Nov-2000 22:16


> I just went through your code (have to prepare a lot of things > for the exibition) and saw directly that your code would need thorough > study.
...
> The indexer, an index CGI utility for indexing HTML for a touchscreen > application
I didn't realise you were doing this for CGI. Accordingly, I'm not sure if my example code has any issues that would be CGI unfriendly. I can't check myself because I haven't had the experience yet between Rebol and CGI to know for sure either way. Brett.

 [15/17] from: sharriff:aina:med-iq at: 21-Nov-2000 11:13


Hi Brett! You said "Yell", well I´m yelling! "result-block: make block! (multiply 2 length? index-block)! could you tell me why you initialized the block in this form? I´ve noticed that you pass references to blocks and words by copying, e.g newblock: copy [] does it have an advantage over newblock: make block! 0 ? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- foreach [char file-list] index-some-data read %. [ write-my-page char file-list ] I presume you "read" the directory in "index-some-data" but without the colon? I expected something like this foreach [char file-list] index-some-data: read %. [ write-my-page char file-list ] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- That means I just have to parse the <title> tag contents of all the files in a given directory and pass it as "some-pagerefs" items ? generate-my-page: function [ page-number some-pagerefs [block!] ][html-page][ html-page: copy {} append html-page reduce [<h1> "This is page " page-number </h1>] foreach pageref some-pagerefs [ append html-page <p> append html-page build-tag reduce ['a 'href pageref] append html-page pageref append html-page [</a> </p>] _______________________________________________________________________________________ This is one of the parts that I like best "either indexed-item: find index-block first item [" I never thought that the left to right evaluation in REBOL could also be passed as a expression to "either" or "for" Thanks Brett for your help Best regards Sharriff Aina

 [16/17] from: brett:codeconscious at: 21-Nov-2000 23:02


> You said "Yell", well I´m yelling!
:)
> result-block: make block! (multiply 2 length? index-block) > could you tell me why you initialized the block in this form?
Only that I believe it pre-allocates memory for the new block to that size. Everything between ( and ) just calculates how many elements I expect in the final block. It is purely a performance tweak.
> I´ve noticed > that you pass references to blocks and words by copying, e.g > newblock: copy [] > does it have an advantage over > newblock: make block! 0 ?
It is shorter. :) And I'm a little nervous about passing in 0 as an argument to the make function (programmers superstition?). Other than that it is exactly the same. If I didn't use copy I would end up changing my code - so all I'm doing is creating a new empty block that is a copy of an existing empty block. Brett.
> foreach [char file-list] index-some-data read %. [ > write-my-page char file-list
<<quoted lines omitted: 4>>
> write-my-page char file-list > ]
Nope. index-some-data was a function I defined in my post. It takes a block as an argument. "read %." produces a block as a result. So all I'm doing is passing the list of files to my function index-some-data which it will then chew on for a bit. When it finishes it will return a block that the foreach will chew on for a bit.
> That means I just have to parse the <title> tag contents of all the files > in a given directory and pass it as "some-pagerefs" items ?
Hmm. Well if you did you would certainly get a page generated but the hrefs would not be valid. I didn't actually cater for the titles and the corresponding files - sorry. I'll have a quick look and probably post something in a little while that does. ____________________________________________________________________________ ___________
> This is one of the parts that I like best > "either indexed-item: find index-block first item [" > I never thought that the left to right evaluation in REBOL could also be > passed as a expression to "either" or "for"
It gets better. Either and for return values too - the last value in their blocks.
>> print either [equal? 1 1] ["yep"]["nup"]
yep

 [17/17] from: brett:codeconscious at: 22-Nov-2000 0:06


> > That means I just have to parse the <title> tag contents of all the
files
> > in a given directory and pass it as "some-pagerefs" items ? > Hmm. Well if you did you would certainly get a page generated but the
hrefs
> would not be valid. I didn't actually cater for the titles and the > corresponding files - sorry. I'll have a quick look and probably post > something in a little while that does.
Well, I had a look. I decided to make a few changes. (1) I'm going to change the structure of the data in the blocks that gets sent to write-my-page function. (2) In order to cope with this both generate-my-page will have to be changed and index-some-data will have to be changed. generate-my-page has two lines changed - the ones that refer to "pageref" index-some-data has two new words added to it "indexing-value" and indexing-function . Compare the code with the original to see how the changes. I decided to allow the index-some-data function to accept a function as an argument. This mean that I give it a new refniement that takes a custom function as an argument. This custom function will determine how index-some-data does its indexing. It sounds complicated but it isn't too bad. Just understand that a function is also a value in Rebol. Why did I do this? Because the data we pass to it will have a new structure. I quite liked the functionality of the previous version of index-some-data so I decided to handle both these cases. So now index-some-data is a little more useful - it is not limited to indexing by the first character. I can define a function that indexes by something else. For example, now I can do this ; same result as before (first is my default indexing function)
>> index-some-data [9-jun-2000 10-jun-2000 13-feb-2001 27-feb-2003]
== [2000 [9-Jun-2000 10-Jun-2000] 2001 [13-Feb-2001] 2003 [27-Feb-2003]] ; now I define a function that returns a day given a date - and pass this function as an argument
>> index-some-data/by [9-jun-2000 10-jun-2000 13-feb-2001 27-feb-2003]
(func[x][x/day]) == [9 [9-Jun-2000] 10 [10-Jun-2000] 13 [13-Feb-2001] 27 [27-Feb-2003]] ; now I define a function that returns a month given a date - and pass this function as an argument
>> index-some-data/by [9-jun-2000 10-jun-2000 13-feb-2001 27-feb-2003]
(func[x][x/month]) == [6 [9-Jun-2000 10-Jun-2000] 2 [13-Feb-2001 27-Feb-2003]] For your problem I'll create one that returns the first character of the title. It reaches into the item block and gets it. Ok here's the wash up. REBOL [ Author: "Brett Handley" Title: "Learning the value of functions :)" Note: {This script has been developed for illustrative purposes only. I leave it to you to determine the fitness of this script to any specific use you have.} ] ; A function that generates a single html page as a string. generate-my-page: function [ page-reference some-pagerefs [block!] ] [html-page] [ html-page: copy {} append html-page reduce [<h1> "This is page " page-reference </h1>] foreach pageref some-pagerefs [ append html-page <p> append html-page build-tag reduce ['a 'href pageref/2] append html-page pageref/1 append html-page [</a> </p>] ] RETURN html-page ] ; A function that writes an single html page. write-my-page: function [ page-reference some-pagerefs [block!] ] [page-string] [ page-string: generate-my-page page-reference some-pagerefs insert head page-string "<HTML><BODY>" insert tail page-string "<p><b>Generated by Rebol</b></p></BODY></HTML>" write (join %test-page- [page-reference %.html]) page-string ] index-some-data: function [ data [series!] /by indexing-function [function!] "A function that returns the indexing data given a data item" ] [ index-block data-block result-block indexed-item index-number indexing-value ] [ ; Set the default indexing function to the "first" function if not by [ ; Set the value of the word "indexing-function" to be that ; of the word "first". indexing-function: :first ] ; Create the blocks index-block: copy [] data-block: copy [] ; Index all the items in the data. foreach item data [ ; Apply the indexing function to the item to get the value to index by. indexing-value: indexing-function item either indexed-item: find index-block indexing-value [ ; Yippe - there is an entry for this - just add it to the list index-number: index? indexed-item insert/only tail (pick data-block index-number) item ] [ ; Not-found we'll have to add it and a new list. insert tail index-block indexing-value insert/only tail data-block reduce [item] ;item inside a new block ] ] ; Now reformat to make a nice result. ; We just merge the two blocks in order. result-block: make block! (multiply 2 length? index-block) for index-number 1 length? index-block 1 [ append result-block (pick index-block index-number) append/only result-block (pick data-block index-number) ] ; Drumroll... RETURN result-block ] ; Main script sample-data: [ ["Episode1" %eps1.html ] ["Empire Strikes Back" %empire.html] ["True Lies" %truelies.html] ["Terminator 2" %termy2.html] ["Priscilla" %queen.html] ] ; Define a custom function to pick just the first character of the title. Call the ; index-some-data function using the custom function as a parameter. indexed-data: index-some-data/by sample-data (func[item][first item/1]) ; Generate and write all the pages. foreach [char list] indexed-data [ write-my-page char list ]

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