Editing HyperTalk (section)

===Forgiving semantics===
One unique distinction between HyperCard's programming language HyperTalk and seemingly similar languages like AppleScript was that HyperTalk scripts were more lenient in what input they accepted.

Apart from the above implicit declaration of variables when a value was assigned to them, and the way values were implicitly converted between types (allowing you to e.g. ask for <code>character 2 of 1234</code>), HyperCard would also recognize certain expressions and extract sub-values from them.

For example:

<syntaxhighlight lang="applescript">
put the selectedLine of card field "Listbox" into theSelection -- gives 'line 2 to 3 of card field "Listbox"'
select line 1 of card field "Listbox"
select line (word 2 of theSelection) of card field "Listbox"
select (the selectedLine of card field "Listbox") -- parentheses added for illustrative purposes only
</syntaxhighlight>

or

<syntaxhighlight lang="applescript">
play harpsichord c e g
play harpsichord "c e g"
put "c e g" into theMelody
play harpsichord theMelody
</syntaxhighlight>

While the end result felt similar to scripters as a Bash script's expansion of variables before parsing, this was special-case syntax and did not have the pitfalls where data would be evaluated as code. So for example, all of the following are syntax errors in the melody, not function calls:

<syntaxhighlight lang="applescript">
play harpsichord "c e g()"
put "c e() g" into theMelody
play harpsichord theMelody
</syntaxhighlight>