Duplicate selection not working

Question

Hi,
here is a sample of my script :
tell application "Finder"
activate
with timeout of 1000 seconds
try
select (every file of the folder DossierArchiveAsura whose name < DateParutionPlusUN and creation date < LaDateFin and creation date > LaDateDebut)
if selection is not {} then
duplicate selection to the folder DossierDateParution
--delete selection
else
activate
display dialog "Aucun fichier à copier." buttons "Ok" default button 1 giving up after 1
end if
select (every file of the folder DossierArchiveAsura whose name > "12_32" and creation date < LaDateFin and creation date > LaDateDebut)
if selection is not {} then
duplicate selection to the folder DossierDateParution
--delete selection
else
activate
display dialog "Aucun fichier à copier." buttons "Ok" default button 1 giving up after 1
end if
on error
display dialog "erreur !"
end try
end timeout
end tell
and the result :
select every file of folder "Controles asura:Archives_Asura:" whose name > "12_32" and creation date < date "samedi 14 octobre 2006 11:22:11" and creation date > date "vendredi 6 octobre 2006 23:22:09"
{document file "3661 ACTUA NB.eps" of folder "Archives_Asura" of disk "Controles asura", document file "3661 ACTUA Q.eps" of folder "Archives_Asura" of disk "Controles asura", document file "express-558.eps" of folder "Archives_Asura" of disk "Controles asura", document file "MBA PAGE1" of folder "Archives_Asura" of disk "Controles asura", document file "MBA PAGE5" of folder "Archives_Asura" of disk "Controles asura"}
get selection
activate
display dialog "Aucun fichier à copier." buttons "Ok" default button 1 giving up after 1
{button returned:"", gave up:true}
If I run the script later it works !!!!! Or something else is duplicated, like the content of all the volume !!!
Oh, I forgot to tell that the script is composed of several part of the same code (of course with different source path) if it can help ?
Thanks a lot for your precious help !
Regards,
Didier.

Answer 1

Hi Didier,
This doesn't look right:
name < DateParutionPlusUN
When you get the name of a file, it returns a string. You probably don't want to do that. If the name is a date string you probably want to coerce it to date first. That's probably why the script is duplicating the whole directory's items. What kind of value is DateParutionPlusUN?
Also, you don't really need to select the items and then duplicate the selection. You can just do something like this:
tell app "Finder"
duplicate (every file of the folder DossierArchiveAsura whose name < DateParutionPlusUN and creation date < LaDateFin and creation date > LaDateDebut) to folder DossierDateParution
end tell
If you wanted to delete the selection later, then it might be better to use a list:
tell app "Finder
set fileList to (every file of the folder DossierArchiveAsura whose name < DateParutionPlusUN and creation date < LaDateFin and creation date > LaDateDebut)
duplicate fileList to folder DossierDateParution
delete fileList
end tell
Edited: Also, what form is the file name in? What kind of date? You might be able to coerce DateParutionPlusUN to short date. It's better if in the form yymmdd. For instance:
"2006/02/01" < "
would be true.
gl,