Find/Replace behaving erratically

Dear friends and experts

In my script FM-biblio the following is a key task:

• An RTF file contains lines with the search and the replace strings:

  {Daube 1989 #9}»(Daube 1989)

  The » denotes a TAB

• For every line in the RTF:
  •   Set up the Find parameters (using the search string)
  •   Find and replace as long as successful (Russ Ward method)

The whole script was developed in FM-13 times (and you find a lot of discussion about it in this forum). Now with FM-14 the Find/Replace loop turns out to be a vabanque game.

My test document is just two pages with 18 search items (some occur multiple times) and i have 11 replace items in the RTF.

The first item in the RTF is often not replaced in the FM doc.

I can repeat the find-replace step of the script multiple times. Sometimes I need to do so 3 times until also the first item is processed (revert to saved between the trials).

➔ What can be the reason for this behaviour? Timing?

For my extensive test series I did not change anything on the script. It is located in %UserProfile%\Docuemnts\Adobe Scripts\

Starting with FM-15 I saved the document as MIF and did the tests 3 times.

FM-15:  Of 3 trials 1 successful; FM-14 3/1; FM-13 3/1; FM-12 3/2; FM-11 3/3; FM-10 3/3

These tests 'mifed down' the document from FM-14 to FM-10, hence removing a lot of not used stuff. And now I repeted the tests:

In all FM-versions up to FM-15 success is 3 of 3!

➔ The more complex the FM file, the less reliable the Find/Change function.

But something else bothered me during the tests: sometimes I got error messages in the log:

"undefined is not an object" on script line 193, which reads

  var inputFile, prompt, docFile;

Then I just restarted FrameMaker and tried agian: No message then...

➔ ExtendScript is not reliable at all.

➔ How to conquer such obstacles?

I have added here only the find/replace function and the function setting up the find parameters:

function FindAndReplaceString (activeDoc, findString, replaceString, loopMax) { //=================
// Replace string by another 
// Function returns replacemtCounter
// Since we have collected only in doc.MainFlowInDoc, we replace only in this flow
// loopMax used as emergency back door - twice the # of initially found citations
// We do not have an initial TextSelection, hence start directly at the first paragraph
// Source: Russ Ward in https://forums.adobe.com/message/3888653
  giFMbib_LvlTrace += 1; ZTrace ("FindAndReplaceString");
  var tr = new TextRange();
  var restoreTR, frame = 0, loopCounter = 0, replacementCounter = 0;
  var findParams = new PropVals();
  var firstPgf = activeDoc.MainFlowInDoc.FirstTextFrameInFlow.FirstPgf;
  
  tr.beg.obj = tr.end.obj = firstPgf;             // set up the starting text range as the very beginning
  tr.beg.offset = tr.end.offset = 0;              // of the flow. We'll move straight from beginning to end.
  trSaved = tr                                    // to come back after work
//We don't need the find to wrap because we are controlling the flow from beginning to end.
  findParams = GetFindParams (findString);        // Get the find parameters for finding string, case sensitive
  InitFA_errno ();                                // reset - it is write protected
  tr = activeDoc.Find(tr.beg, findParams);        // and do an initial find to get started.
  
  while(FA_errno === Constants.FE_Success && loopCounter++ < 2*loopMax) { //find and replace loop as long as we keep finding
ZLog ("   Replacement = «" + replaceString + "»")
    activeDoc.TextSelection = tr;                 // set up the text range to clear the original text
    activeDoc.Clear(0);                           // clear it
    activeDoc.AddText(tr.beg, replaceString);     // insert the new text at the original beginning of the text range
    tr.beg.offset += replaceString.length;        // lets jimmy the text range in memory to place it directly after
                                                  // the string we just inserted, so the find picks back up after that.
    if(FA_errno === Constants.FE_Success) {       // increment our return counter - does not work
      replacementCounter++;
    }
    InitFA_errno ();                              // to be used to track the progress of the find and replace
    tr = activeDoc.Find(tr.beg, findParams);      // something screwy happened while we were replacing text.
  }
  activeDoc.ScrollToText(trSaved);                // we're done. Restore the document to it's original area of display
  giFMbib_LvlTrace -= 1;
  return replacementCounter;
} // --- end FindAndReplaceString
function GetFindParams (string) { //===============================================================
// Get/set the find parameters 
// Returns find parameters in the function
// Consider string, case; 
// Source; Rick Quatro
  if (gbFMbib_Verbose) {giFMbib_LvlTrace += 1; ZTrace ("GetFindParams");}
  var findParams = AllocatePropVals (2);  
  findParams[0].propIdent.num = Constants.FS_FindText;  
  findParams[0].propVal.valType = Constants.FT_String;  
  findParams[0].propVal.sval = string;  
  findParams[1].propIdent.num = Constants.FS_FindCustomizationFlags;
  findParams[1].propVal.valType = Constants.FT_Integer;
  findParams[1].propVal.ival = Constants.FF_FIND_CONSIDER_CASE;
  if (gbFMbib_Verbose) {giFMbib_LvlTrace -= 1;}
  return findParams;  
} // --- end GetFindParams