Lingo Code "[cc]" is coming up as a fault - adobe-director

Question

The game is a word search game in an advanced lingo book and the lingo code is using [cc] which is coming up as a code fault. What is wrong or is this use of [cc] obsolete? And if so, how can it be corrected?
on getPropertyDescriptionList me
list = [:]
-- the text member with the words in it
addProp list, #pWordSource,[cc]
[#comment: "Word Source",[cc]
#format: #text,[cc]
#default: VOID]
addProp list, #pEndGameFrame,[cc]
[#comment: "End Game Frame",[cc]
#format: #marker,[cc]
#default: #next]
return list
end

Answer 1

I guess this is code from here, right?
That seems like an older version of Lingo syntax. [cc], apparently, stands for "continuation character". It basically makes the compiler ignore the linebreak right after it, so that it sees everything from [#comment: to #default: VOID] as one long line, which is the syntactically correct way to write it.
If I remember correctly, once upon a time, the guys who made Lingo made one more crazy decision and made the continuation character look like this: ¬ Of course, this didn't print in lots of places, so some texts like your book used things like [cc] in its place.
In modern versions of Lingo, the continuation character is \, just like in C.

Answer 2

I programmed in early director but have gone on to other languages in the many years since. I understand this code. The function attempts to generate a dictionary of dictionaries. in quasi-JSON:
{
'pWordSource': { ... } ,
'pEndGameFrame': { ... }
}
It is creating a string hash, then storing a "pWordSource" as a new key pointing to a 3 item hash of it's own. The system then repeats the process with a new key "pEndGameFrame", providing yet another 3 item hash. So just to expand the ellipses ... from the above code example:
{
'pWordSource': { 'comment': 'Word Source', 'format': 'text', 'default': null } ,
'pEndGameFrame': { 'End Game Frame': 'Word Source', 'format': 'marker', 'default': 'next' }
}
So I hope that explains the hash characters. It's lingo's way of saying "this is not just a string, it's a special director-specific system we're calling a symbol. It can be described in more conventional programming terms as a constant. The lingo compiler will replace your #string1 with an integer, and it's always going to be the same integer associated with #string1. Because the hash keys are actually integers rather than strings, we can change the json model to look something more like this:
{
0: { 2: 'Word Source', 3: 'text', 4: null } ,
1: { 2:'End Game Frame', 3: 'marker', 4: 'next' }
}
where:
0 -> pWordSource
1 -> pEndGameFrame
2 -> comment
3 -> format
4 -> default
So to mimic the same construction behavior in 2016 lingo, we use the newer object oriented dot syntax for calling addProp on property lists.
on getPropertyDescriptionList me
list = [:]
-- the text member with the words in it
list.addProp(#pWordSource,[ \
#comment: "Word Source", \
#format: #text, \
#default: void \
])
list.addProp(#pEndGameFrame,[ \
#comment: "End Game Frame", \
#format: #marker, \
#default: #next \
])
return list
end
Likewise, the same reference shows examples of how to use square brackets to "access" properties, then initialize them by setting their first value.
on getPropertyDescriptionList me
list = [:]
-- the text member with the words in it
list[#pWordSource] = [ \
#comment: "Word Source", \
#format: #text, \
#default: void \
]
list[#pEndGameFrame] = [ \
#comment: "End Game Frame", \
#format: #marker, \
#default: #next \
]
return list
end
And if you are still confused about what the backslashes are doing, there are other ways to make the code more vertical.
on getPropertyDescriptionList me
list = [:]
-- the text member with the words in it
p = [:]
p[#comment] = "Word Source"
p[#format] = #text
p[#default] = void
list[#pWordSource] = p
p = [:] -- allocate new dict to avoid pointer bug
p[#comment] = "End Game Frame"
p[#format] = #marker
p[#default] = #next
list[#pEndGameFrame] = p
return list
end
The above screenshot shows it working in Director 12.0 on OS X Yosemite.