II. ColdFusion Tip: To <cfscript> or not to <cfscript> By Kevin Schmidt, Web Technology Manager Allaire Certified Cold Fusion Developer schmidt@pwb.com

III. ColdFusion Tip: Where am I? By Nathan Stanford admin@nsnd.com

============== I. Comments: I met Kevin Schmidt at the Allaire Conference in Washington, DC. We seemed to hit off. He is a friend and a great guy. If your looking for someone to answer your questions here is someone you can ask. He is not afraid to try new things.

=============================================================== If you have any suggestions please email me at cftips@nsnd.com. ===============================================================

=============================================================== II. ColdFusion Tip: To <cfscript> or not to <cfscript> By Kevin Schmidt, Web Technology Manager Allaire Certified Cold Fusion Developer schmidt@pwb.com ===============================================================

That's a good question. What is <cfscript> and when is the best time to use it? The <cfscript> tag is used to enclosecfscript code. With <cfscript> you have access to use ColdFusion functions expressions, and operators. You can also set and use ColdFusion varaibles with <cfscript>. The syntax of <cfscript> is similar to that of Javascript but not identical. If you want all the gritty details there is a section in Developing Web Applications with ColdFusion from Allaire that explains all the differences in syntax. Now that we know what <cfscript> is when would we want to use it? Take a look at the code below:

<CFSET first_name = "Kevin"> <CFSET middle_initial = "A."> <CFSET last_name = "Schmidt">

Instead of using all <CFSET> tags to set up the above variables we could use <cfscript>. The code below illustrates how <cfscript> works.

<cfscript> first_name = "Kevin"; middle_initial = "A."; last_name = "Schmidt"; </cfscript>

Both of these examples do the same thing. They set up variables for first name, middle initial, and last name, but by using <cfscript> you get a slight gain in performance and save a few extra keystrokes. Thus the next time you find yourself using the <CFSET> tag or setting up a structure try using <cfscript> instead.

If you have questions or comments or suggestions for a future tip please email me at schmidt@pwb.com. Until next week, Happy CF'ing

Kevin Schmidt Allaire Certified Cold Fusion Developer Coming next week: Arrays

============== III. ColdFusion Tip: Where am I? By Nathan Stanford admin@nsnd.com ==============

<cfset PhysicalPath = ListDeleteAt(cgi.path_translated,ListLen (cgi.path_translated,"\"),"\")>

Someone in one of the ColdFusion lists was requesting a way to get the path without the filename on the end of it. I coded out one way of doing it but another developer came up with this much shorter way to do it. The above code will get the path to the current directory. I have in a previous tip shown you how to get the current file name so you could use it in your scripts and custom tags. Example would be you create a custom tag and encrypt it and someone wants to rename it. Then if your code is looking at the actual file name that you're currently in. Your code will not break but if on the other hand you have it hard coded in your code then it will break.

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