Editing HyperTalk (section)

===Fundamental operations===
For most basic operations including mathematical computations, HyperTalk favored natural-language ordering of predicates over the ordering used in mathematical notation. For example, in HyperTalk's <code>put</code> assignment command, the variable was placed at the end of the statement:
<syntaxhighlight lang="applescript">
 put 5 * 4 into theResult
</syntaxhighlight>
whereas in the more traditional [[BASIC]] programming language (and most others), the same would be accomplished by writing:
<syntaxhighlight lang="basic">
 theResult = 5 * 4
</syntaxhighlight>

The HyperTalk code has the side-effect of creating the [[Variable (computer science)|variable]] ''theResult'' on the fly. Scripts could assign any type or value to a variable using the <code>put</code> command, making HyperTalk ''very'' [[weakly typed]]. Conversions between variable types were invisible and automatic: the string "3" could be multiplied by the number 5 to produce the number 15, or the number 5 [[Concatenation|concatenated]] onto the string "3" to produce the string "35". HyperTalk would not complain unless the types could not be automatically converted.

The language's flow control and logic were generally similar to other common languages, using an <code>if ... then ... else ... end if</code> structure for [[Conditional (computer programming)|conditionals]] and supporting [[Loop (computing)#Loops|loops]] based on a flexible <code>repeat ... end repeat</code> syntax. [[Comment (computer programming)|Comments]] were prefaced with two minus signs: <code>-- this is a comment</code>.