Hidden control characters in file generated by AppleScript?

Question

Hi all,
I've come across a strange problem. I have an AppleScript app (kindly produced for me by a member here) that gets called up by cron, which puts up a dialog box at regular intervals asking me to write down what I am doing (to create an activity log). The log is saved to my Documents folder if it doesn't already exist; otherwise my typing will just get time-stamped and added to the file.
This has been working just fine for several months (years), and now, all of a sudden, AppleScript konks out on me -- it simply crashes. The reason, I discovered, is the log file itself. It gets inflated out of proportions (something like 2.5 Megs where 40K would suffice) because it contains hidden control characters (gremlins) between each letter and zillions of them between words and lines.
When the script opens this inflated file, TextEdit balks ('Application not responding'), which in turn crashes AppleScript.
I discovered these gremlins when I opened the document in Classic mode with Word 5, which allows me to remove them and thus make the file smaller and therefore palatable to TextEdit again.
But that doesn't solve the problem: Every entry continues to be inserted with another load of gremlins, and I can't understand why. I deleted preferences both for TextEdit and AppleScript, and I perform regular disk maintenance.
TextEdit is set to save plain text files, end-of-line is Macintosh style, character set is Western Mac OS Roman. It's always been like this before when it worked ok.
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance.
G4 MDD 1.25 GHz, 768 MB RAM Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Answer 1

Hi Camelot,
The script doesn't specify TextEdit -- it just creates/updates a text file which I then read with TextEdit. Here's the script, and below is the link to the test log:
--STARTOFSCRIPT------------------------------------------
-- Find out if the log file is actually there.
-- We can't get the last entry of a file that doesn't exist.
set fileExists to false
tell application "Finder"
if exists file "MacHD:Users:gisela:Documents:Gisela'sActivityLog.txt" then set fileExists to true
end tell
-- Get the last entry in the log file to present to the user.
-- If the file wasn't there, present a default choice to the user.
if fileExists then
set myLogFile to open for access ((path to documents folder as text) & "Gisela'sActivityLog.txt")
set logFileContents to read myLogFile using delimiter return
close access myLogFile
set lastLogEntry to last item of text items of logFileContents
set oldTIDs to AppleScript's text item delimiters
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to tab
set lastEntry to text item 2 of lastLogEntry
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to oldTIDs
else
set lastEntry to "Nothin' much."
end if
-- Ask the user what they're doing.
set myLogEntry to text returned of (display dialog "So... What're you doing?" default answer lastEntry buttons {"OK"} default button "OK" with icon note)
-- Get the date and time via "Do Shell Script" (for me, easier than mucking with AppleScript's date results).
-- Modified order to Year Month Day# Weekday hour:min:sec [Gisela]
set dateUnix to do shell script "date"
set dateText to word 8 of dateUnix & " " & word 2 of dateUnix & " " & word 3 of dateUnix & " " & word 1 of dateUnix & " " & word 4 of dateUnix & ":" & word 5 of dateUnix & ":" & word 6 of dateUnix & " " & tab
-- Open a log file on the desktop. The file is created if it doesn't exist.
set myLogFile to open for access ((path to documents folder as text) & "Gisela'sActivityLog.txt") with write permission
-- Write a log entry into the file.
write dateText & myLogEntry & return to myLogFile starting at eof
-- Close the log file.
close access myLogFile
-- Script by Bryan K. Vines, Corpus Christi, TX, via Apple Discussion Forum 22/5/04 and 24/5/04
--ENDOFSCRIPT------------------------------------------
Here's the test log => http://www.webalice.it/gisela/TestLog.txt. Had to change the name because my webspace doesn't like apostrophes (').
This phenomenon only occurs in connection with this Activity log script. My gut tells me it's not AppleScript's fault, but I can't figure out where else to look.
Kind regards,
Gisela