KM variables are global: what about local use without conflict?

Questions & Suggestions
1

KM variables, listed as:

Keyboard Maestro variables list.kmmacros (29.3 KB)

Keyboard Maestro variables list.jpg1240×974 145 KB

are globales...

How to manage local use (emulating local variables in fact) avoiding conflict in Execute Macro Action call's chain?

Any ideas, thanks,
--Alain

2

Hey Alain,

That macro gets the job done but is more complicated than necessary for simply displaying the variables.

Even so – your usage of the different KM actions shows you've come a long way, since you started.

Just for giggles here's my more generic Keyboard Maestro environment dumper macro:

Keyboard_Maestro { Dump_Env env }.kmmacros (2.1 KB)

It can easily be adjusted to use TextEdit instead of BBEdit as the viewer. (TextWrangler could easily replace BBEdit as well if its command-line tools are installed.)

On to Global vs Local Variables in Keyboard Maestro.

Keyboard Maestro has NO concept of Local. All variables are Global.

If you really need a local variable you can write-to and read-from the defaults system using the shell.

OR

You can write-to and read-from 1 or more files.

Create a folder somewhere called Keyboard_Maestro_Variables, and give it a sub-folder structure that makes sense for your context.

Keyboard_Maestro_Variables/
myMacroName_Variables/
fileName.txt
filePath.txt

Keyboard Maestro has read-from-file and write-to-file actions, so that's easy.

You can also easily read/write from AppleScript.

There are some other methods, but these are the simplest.

-Chris

3

Of course :blush: Thanks to point out and for your dumper. First, I want to use KM to process further and change my mind...

Focusing on KM "local" variables:

Could you elaborate? How is the naming (name space)?

--Alain

4

Hey Alain,

I'm not more than a casual user of the defaults database.

Accessing it from the shell is a bit slow, so I'm unlikely to fool with it more than I have to until I can access it more quickly with ASObjC or something else.

Here are a couple of reference points:

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/defaults.1.html

http://www.macissues.com/2014/03/25/how-to-properly-manipulate-defaults-in-os-x/

Here's a working example:

Write:

defaults write com.ccs.prefs prefVal01 -bool true

Read:

defaults read com.ccs.prefs prefVal01

Delete:

defaults delete com.ccs.prefs prefVal01

com.ccs is me, although that's only on my machine.

I would not use this system for prefs.

I would either use a system of text files, as I described earlier.

OR

I'd use a single .plist file and operate it with System Events or the Satimage XMLLib.osax (preferably the latter).

OR

I'd use a flat text file and the Satimage.osax's regEx (or KM's regex).

Reading and writing to/from a file is very fast unless the file is quite big.

-Chris

5

Thanks Chris for your detailed stimulating tracks.

I will come back if something which deserve sharing appears.

–Alain