LiveCode Forums.

I'm new to LiveCode, although I did a lot of HyperCard development in the 1980s. Some of the sample stacks on the LiveCode website were seemed like a good place to start learning.

I'm using LiveCode Community 9 dot 6 dot 1 on MacOS Catalina 10 dot 15 dot 6.

I downloaded a stack named "Text and Chunk Expressions dot livecode", explored it for a while, and then made a duplicate stack (with a different file name) in which I could make modifications. When I tried to open that stack, I got an error dialog.

(Unfortunately, I cannot find any way to include an image of that dialog in this post, nor can I include the URL of such an image on my own website. As a phpBB site administrator myself, I can appreciate why this is the case.)

The dialog message was "A stack with the same name as the one you are trying to load is already open. Before loading new stack name, what do you want to do with stack: old stack name?" There were three buttons: "Save", "Purge", and "Cancel". No matter which button I clicked, there would be some screen activity (windows closing and reopening), and then the same dialog would appear again. I finally had to "force quit" LiveCode and relaunch it to clear the dialog.

I assume that this dialog behavior is a LiveCode bug. But what did I do that caused the dialog to appear? I seem to remember in HyperCard that stack names and file names were the same; is this not the case in LiveCode?

Also, why does this forum force me to use the word "dot" instead of a period character in the software version designations and the stack file name?

Thanks.

Hi PlaidFlannel,

welcome to the forum!
Due to lots of spammers, you need to have at least seven postings before you can post images , links (the DOT thing) etc. here.

Yes, I can feel your pain, this is a long standing bug.
To avoid this, simply quit LC and duplicate the stack in the FINDER.


Best

Klaus

I would say "the handling of the issue" is a bug, or at least a bug-like problem. But, the "issue itself" is not a bug as such. As you already noted the possibility and raised the question, this highlights the difference of LC from HC in that the filename and stack name are NOT the same.

If you restart LC and open the stack (so that there is only one copy in memory) and view the stack details in the property inspector you will notice the top entry on the first take is the stack name. This can be completely different from the filename you save it as. Hence if you didn't change the stack name here, then although the filenames were different on disk, this is the reference that LC will be using that causes the name collision.

Thanks to Klaus and SparkOut.

Regarding the dots: I just tried to post the approximate value of pi, but I got this message:
So, in case you forgot, the approximate value of pi is 3 dot 14.

When I get the collision error I usually click Purge. That removes the original stack from RAM and leaves the one you're opening. That way you don't have to quit LC.