How do i make this a sub routine

Question

I have a little script to drill down folders and add comments to every folder and ever file inside the parent folder. It works perfectly well when run but itself. This was based heavily on the script found by NovaScotian here http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2182916&#2182916
I basically want to make this script into a sub routine, and i have tried various methods and havent been able to make it work.
global the_comments
global each_item
global pete
global ddp
global ddp2
set ddp to {}
set ddp2 to {}
set theLetter to "s"
set newDroppedFiles to choose folder with multiple selections allowed
to drilldown(afolder)
tell application "Finder"
set file_list to files of a_folder
set folder_list to folders of a_folder
end tell
repeat with i in file_list
processDrilledDownFile(i)
tell application "Finder"
set comment of pete to text of the_comments
end tell
end repeat
repeat with i in folder_list
copy i to end of ddp2
drill_down(i)
end repeat
end drill_down
on processDrilledDownFile(a_file)
copy a_file to end of ddp
end processDrilledDownFile
set the_comments to (do shell script "/usr/bin/defaults read com.Rich.move " & theLetter & "Text")
repeat with each_item in newDroppedFiles
set pete to each_item
tell application "Finder"
set comment of each_item to text of the_comments
end tell
drill_down(pete)
end repeat
repeat with each_item in ddp
tell application "Finder"
set comment of each_item to text of the_comments
end tell
end repeat
repeat with each_item in ddp2
tell application "Finder"
set comment of each_item to text of the_comments
end tell
end repeat
regards
Rich

Answer 1

Your script already includes several subroutines, so the trick is separating those out first.
Essentially your script consists of three elements - global declarations, your own subroutines and a run handler. Since there's no explicit 'on run', everything that's not inside a subroutine becomes the run handler.
Therefore what you should do is strip out all the code that's not a global declaration or an existing handler and just wrap that in a new 'on subroutinename()... end subroutinename' block.
For sanity's sake I'd also add a specific run handler to bind it all together.
This means you'll end up with something like:
<pre class=command>global the_comments
global each_item
global pete
global ddp
global ddp2
on run
my myNiftySubroutine()
end run
to drilldown(afolder)
tell application "Finder"
set file_list to files of a_folder
set folder_list to folders of a_folder
end tell
repeat with i in file_list
processDrilledDownFile(i)
tell application "Finder"
set comment of pete to text of the_comments
end tell
end repeat
repeat with i in folder_list
copy i to end of ddp2
drill_down(i)
end repeat
end drill_down
on processDrilledDownFile(a_file)
copy a_file to end of ddp
end processDrilledDownFile
on myNiftySubroutine()
set ddp to {}
set ddp2 to {}
set theLetter to "s"
set newDroppedFiles to choose folder with multiple selections allowed
set the_comments to (do shell script "/usr/bin/defaults read com.Rich.move " & theLetter & "Text")
repeat with each_item in newDroppedFiles
set pete to each_item
tell application "Finder"
set comment of each_item to text of the_comments
end tell
drill_down(pete)
end repeat
repeat with each_item in ddp
tell application "Finder"
set comment of each_item to text of the_comments
end tell
end repeat
repeat with each_item in ddp2
tell application "Finder"
set comment of each_item to text of the_comments
end tell
end repeat
end myNiftySubroutine</pre>
There's just one other observation - most of the globals are not actually needed since you can just pass them as parameters to the subroutines.
I'm also not sure what the purpose of the script is - the upshot seems to be that you're setting the comment of items in the Finder, however, since you:
<pre class=command> set comment of pete to text of the_comments</pre>
and pete is a global pointing to the folder you're processing, surely this sets the comment of the folder x times, where x is the number of files in the folder - in other words if there are 100 files in the folder, you set the comment of the folder 100 times and don't touch the files themselves. Is that what you intend?