Getting raw data of a variable

Question

Is anyone aware of a handy way to get the raw (hex) data of an AppleScript variable into a text string? For example:
«data rdatEFBBBF»
«data isot323030372D31322D31325431373A34393A3130»
I can do some comparisons, and put the raw data as text into a variable, but trying to get the actual raw data as text either fails or gets coerced into whatever it is supposed to be (such as ISOT). Well, actually I can do the "force an error and grab the error message" trick, but there has got to be a better way. Perhaps something along the lines of set X to do shell script "whattheheck " & (SomeVariable as data)?

Answer 1

Hello
Under OS9/Classic, we can use a mighty 'cast' command of 'programmer's tool' OSAX made by Ed Lai for this kind of task.
http://osaxen.com/files/programmerstool1.0a10.html
Under OSX, the ladder has been removed.
One dirty way I can think of is to use write and read commands to force to replace the class of given data. Somethnig like this, though it won't work properly with AppleScript 2.0 if the input or output data is a sort of text object.
--SCRIPT
set x to «data isot323030372D31322D31325431373A34393A3130»
--set x to «data rdatEFBBBF»
--set x to current date
--set x to {1, 2, 3}
--set x to "ABC" as Unicode text
set y to dump(x, string)
set z to dump(y, data)
return {x, y, z}
on dump(x, cls)
  anything x : anything to be dumped [1]
  type class cls : resulting class of dumped data. e.g. string, data etc.
  return anything : dumped data as given class [2]
  * Notes.
  [1] x must be what 'write' osax can write to file. (E.g. script object etc cannot be processed by this method)
  [2] It won't return exact raw byte sequence in AppleScript 2.0 if
    - x's class is one of {Unicode text, string, text}; or
    - cls is one of {Unicode text, «class utf8», string, text}.
set fp to (path to "desk" from user domain as Unicode text) & "scptdump_tempfile" & (random number 1000000)
try
set fref to open for access file fp with write permission
set eof fref to 0
write x to fref
close access fref
set d to read file fp as cls
on error errs number errn
try
close access file fp
end try
error "dump():" & errs number errn
end try
do shell script "rm -f " & quoted form of POSIX path of fp
return d
end dump
--END OF SCRIPT
Hope this may be of some help,
Hiroto
PS.
In pre-AS 2.0, we can use 'string' to hold raw byte sequence of any kind of data, although it might be indeed an abuse of 'string' object. In AS 2.0, we seem to have lost this final way to abuse string and I'm yet to know any alternative way to process raw byte sequence safely.
Now, I think, it would be really nice to see the following basic features being implemented with «class rdat» in order to process raw byte sequence in AppleScript 2.0 or later, where we cannot 'abuse' string anymore:
• length property; e.g. length of «data rdat0032» (count «data rdat0032») returning 2.
• way to extract element(s); e.g. item 4 of «data rdat32303037» returning «data rdat37»
• way to concatenate two data; e.g. «data rdat32» & «data rdat30» returing «data rdat3230»
• way to perform valid coercion to other class, e.g. «data rdat0032» as Unicode text returning "2" (= U+0032).
• way to perform coercion from other class, e.g. ("2" as Unicode text) as data returning «data rdat0032»
Just my daydream. ; )
Message was edited by: Hiroto (corrected typo)