Can't make ... into type number

Question

Can't make ... into type number

A script of mine contains:

set duration to (word -2 of (do shell script "/usr/bin/afinfo " & eachFile & "|grep duration")) as number

Where eachFile is a .m4r file that the user has been asked to select. I've always been able to execute this script without error, but some others who have used it report that they get an error message such as: "Can't make 10.94778 into type number." I assume it has to do with the above line, but I cannot think of how to fix the issue, especially since I am unable to reproduce it.

 MacBook Pro with Retina display-OTHER, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5), 15 in, Late 2013, 256GB, 8GB RAM

Posted on Sep 27, 2015 11:58 AM

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Answer 1

Hiroto

Level 5

7,461 points

Sep 27, 2015 1:44 PM in response to stevejobsfan0123

Decimal separator is locale dependent and thus AppleScript's string-to-number and number-to-string conversions are locale dependent. You need to take care of it before coercing string to number in AppleScript. Something like this.

set f to "/path/to/audio/file" if "," is in (0.0 as string) then (do shell script "afinfo " & f's quoted form & " | sed -En '/duration/ { s/.* ([0-9.]+) .*/\\1/ s/\\./,/p }'") as number else (do shell script "afinfo " & f's quoted form & " | sed -En '/duration/ { s/.* ([0-9.]+) .*/\\1/p }'") as number end if

H

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Answer 2

Sep 27, 2015 1:52 PM in response to Hiroto

Thank you. So if I understand correctly, the current shell script will return the decimal "." form, whereas, depending on the locale, it is expecting the "," form? I'll give your suggestion a try.

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Answer 3

Sep 27, 2015 2:28 PM in response to stevejobsfan0123

Hi,

This will not work on all systems, because the decimal separator is different depending on the "Language and Region" settings.

So, you can use aWord as real

set duration to (word -2 of (do shell script "/usr/bin/afinfo " & eachFile & "|grep duration")) as real

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Answer 4

Sep 27, 2015 3:03 PM in response to Jacques Rioux

After thinking about this some more, I believe that for my purposes, I can actually just leave it as a string. I just need to check whether the audio file's duration is greater than one second. If I say "if duration starts with '0' then ..." that should be sufficient.

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