THE HYPERCARD CENTER

HyperTalk Reference

Note: This is a work in progress and many formatting issues have been fixed. Read more about the project on the home page.

put

put expression

put expression preposition ¬

   [chunk of] container

put menuItemList preposition ¬

     [menuItem of] menu ¬

     [with menuMessages messageList]

The put command evaluates an expression and places the value it extracts into, after, or before the contents of a container.

The container can be a button, a field, a variable, the Message box, the selection, a chunk expression, or a menu. If you don’t specify a container, HyperCard puts the value into the Message box, showing it if it’s hidden.

Use put with into to replace the contents of a container or menu, with before to place the value at the beginning of its contents, and with after to append the value to the end of its contents.

The lines of text that you put into a pop-up button become the items of the menu that appears when you click the button.

Before you can add items to a menu, the menu must already exist.

The menuItemList is a comma-separated list of the items you want to add to the menu. Use the single character "-" to get a gray line. You can put up to 64 items into a menu with a single put statement.

The optional messageList is a comma-separated list of message names that HyperCard sends to the current card when the user chooses one of the menu items. The number of items in the messageList must equal the number of items in menuItemList.

To skip a message name, use an empty item—a null between two commas:

"myMessage 1,,myMessage 3"

Examples

-- These are equivalent:

put 42.5 * 675

put 42.5 * 675 into msg

put 42.5 * 675 into the Message box

put empty into It

put "Hello" into field 1

put "Go: " before field "WhereTo"

put "." after last character of last word of field 3

put the date into varName

put the clickLine into theLineClicked

put the value of the clickLine into theTextClicked

put "*" after the selection

-- Add items to a menu:

create menu "Example"

put "1,2,3,-,4,5,6" into menu "Example"

put "7" after menu "Example" with menuMessage "beep"

put "a,b,c,-" before menu "example" ¬

    with menuMessages "beep,beep 2,beep 3,empty"

-- add items to a button

put "Boston" & return & "New York" & return & "Salem" into button "Maps"

Demo Script

on putDemo

  get bkgndFields()

  if the number of chars of it < 255 then answer it

end putDemo

function bkgndFields

  -- Returns a return-delimited list of the bg fields

  repeat with i = 1 to the number of bkgnd fields

    put the short name of bg field i & return after theFields

  end repeat

  return theFields

end bkgndFields

Placeholders

expression

HyperTalk Definition

Any HyperTalk expression. All expressions evaluate to text, a number, or a constant.

For example:

true

sin(90)

"this is" && it

(3+2) = 5

the heapspace div 1024

Note: Formally, HyperCard distinguishes between factors (simple values) and expressions. The difference between factors and expressions matters only if you like to drop parentheses. Most functions take factors as their parameters, which is why length of 3 + 5 returns 6 and length of (3 + 5) returns 1. In short, always use parentheses to group things the way you want them to evaluate, and you won’t have to worry about the difference between factors and expressions.

AppleScript Definition

Any series of words that has a value.

preposition

One of the following:

into

before

after

chunk

One of the following forms (or combinations thereof):

ordinal character

character posInteger [to posInteger]

ordinal word

word posInteger [to posInteger]

ordinal item

item posInteger [to posInteger]

ordinal line

line posInteger [to posInteger]

For example:

first character

second item

middle line

character 1

char 1 to 10

word 3

item 5 to (the number of items of me)

line 1 to 10

char 1 to 10 of word 2 to 4 of ¬

line 3 to 6

A chunk combined with of and a container is called a chunk expression. For example: line 1 of card field "index"

Important: You can’t combine a stack name with a chunk expression—you can only refer to a chunk in the current stack.

container

HyperTalk Definition

A place where you can store and retrieve a value.

There are six types of containers in HyperCard: a variable, a button, a field, the selection, the Message box, and menus.

myVariable

[the] selection

the Message box

btn 3

bg btn "Names"

card field 1

bkgnd field "Total"

menu 2

menu "Edit"

Additionally, you can refer to a button or field by its part number:

card part 1

last background part

AppleScript Definition

An object that contains one or more other objects, known as elements of the container. In a reference, the container specifies where to find an object. You specify containers with the reserved words of or in.

You can also use the possesive form ('s) to specify containers. For example, in

first window's name

the container is first window. The object it contains is a name property.

menuItemList

A comma-separated list of names that you want to appear on a menu.

Use the single character “-” to get a gray line.

For example, the Menu item list for the first 9 items on the Go menu would be:

"Back,Home,Help,Recent,-," & ¬

"First,Prev,Next,Last"

See also: messageList.

menuItem

An expression that evaluates to one of the following:

menuItem text

menuItem posInteger

ordinal menuItem

For example:

menuItem "New"

menuItem 2

second menuItem

messageList

A comma-separated list of message names that you want sent when the user chooses a menu item in menuItemList.

Use empty to indicate no message in HyperTalk, or "" to indicate no message in AppleScript.

For example, the menu message list for the first 9 items on the Go menu would be:

"go back,go home,help," & ¬

 "go recent,empty," & ¬

  "go first,go prev,go next," & ¬

   "go last"

HyperTalk Reference

Version 0.8b4 (July 4, 2025)

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put