Commands and Functions

SenseTalk supports many commands and functions to help you process information.

Commands are statements that direct a script’s actions. They can refer to a built-in SenseTalk command, or refer to a handler that you have written. For more information on how Commands work, see Commands and Comments.

Functions are calls to handlers that return a value, used within an expression. In addition to SenseTalk’s built-in functions, you can also write your own function handlers.

The sections linked below provide information on the various commands and functions supported by SenseTalk for various purposes:

Text and Data Manipulation: SenseTalk has strong text handling capabilities. Read this information to understand the text functions and commands that are available for manipulating strings of text and other data.

Arithmetic Calculations: SenseTalk supports mathematical operations through its mathematical operators, commands, and functions. Read this information to understand the mathematical functions and commands that are available for performing various numeric calculations.

Points and Rectangles: SenseTalk understands the concepts of geometric points and rectangles. Use the information provided on this page to see how you can manipulate coordinates to perform a variety of actions.

Date and Time Values: Describes the commands and functions that SenseTalk provides for working with dates and times. Read this information to understand how to use and manipulate values representing dates and times.

Pattern Matching: Use the functions described here to work with SenseTalk's pattern language for finding pattern matches within text.

File and Folder References: Use the commands and functions described here to access information about files and the file system, to determine or change your working directory, and other details about paths and directories. You can also access properties for individual files, such as file size and assigned permissions.

File and Folder Interaction: SenseTalk provides a number of methods for working with files on the local file system. You can read and write the contents of files, as well as create and delete files, and obtain various information about them. Read this information to understand the facilities available for reading and writing data in files, and for working with files and folders in the file system.

Socket, Process, and Stream Input and Output: Use the commands and functions described here to work with sockets, processes, and standard input or output, including reading and writing data with these sources.

URL Transactions and Formatting: Describes how SenseTalk can be used to access resources on the Internet through their URLs (Uniform Resource Locators). Through this mechanism, SenseTalk can access the contents of files and websites across the Internet and communicate with remote servers using standard protocols. A number of supporting functions are available to make it easy to convert information between standard URL formats.

Using XML and Tree Structures in SenseTalk Scripts: Describes the tree structure and how it can be used to read, write, and manipulate XML data. SenseTalk's tree structure provides the ability to easily read data in XML format, access and manipulate that data within a tree, and produce XML from this data.

Color Values in SenseTalk: Describes facilities to enable your scripts to work with values representing colors. A color can be represented in SenseTalk as a combination of component values in any of several different formats.

Binary Data Manipulation: Explains mechanisms for working with binary (non-textual) data in your scripts. Most scripts work with data in the form of text and numbers, and sometimes other types of values such as dates or colors. When needed, SenseTalk can also deal with data in its binary form, which is the raw bits and bytes that are stored on a computer.

Accessing System Information: Read this information to understand the functions that provide information about various aspects of the system where the SenseTalk script is running.

System Interaction: Read this information to understand the commands and functions that let your script interact with the system on which the script is running, launch other programs, open files in other programs, or run system commands through the UNIX shell.