Simple scripting help

[Erwin van der Zwart]

Well it's by far not a simple script that is why i took the challenge as i like that (:

Create your ASCII objects and add the tag "Scramble" to it and run this script to scramble all the object values without any duplicates 

Code:

-- get objects to scramble by tag
scrambled = grp.tag('Scramble')

-- set randomseed
math.randomseed(os.time())

-- function to scramble strings
function scramble(str)
  local chars = {}
  for char in str:gmatch'.[\128-\191]*' do
    table.insert(chars, {char = char, rnd = math.random()})
  end
  table.sort(chars, function(a, b) return a.rnd < b.rnd end)
  for i, v in ipairs(chars) do
    chars[i] = v.char
  end
  return table.concat(chars)
end

-- create new values table with unique values
newvalues = {}
for i, object in ipairs(scrambled) do
  -- Set max retries for unique values to avoid script lockout
  max_retry = 100
  -- Goto marker when value is already in the table or the same as old value
  ::retry::
  if #newvalues < 1 then
    value = scramble(object.value)
    if value == object.value then
      max_retry = max_retry - 1
      if max_retry < 1 then
        return
      else
      goto retry
      end
    end
  table.insert(newvalues, {address = object.address, value = value})
  else
    value = scramble(object.value)
    if value == object.value then
      max_retry = max_retry - 1
      if max_retry < 1 then
        return
      else
        goto retry
      end
    end
    for j, newvalue in ipairs(newvalues) do
      if value == newvalue.value then
        max_retry = max_retry - 1
        if max_retry < 1 then
          return
        else
          goto retry
        end
      end
    end
    table.insert(newvalues, {address = object.address, value = value})
  end
end

--Check if tables are same lenght
if #newvalues == #scrambled then
-- update objects
for _, object in ipairs(newvalues) do
   grp.checkupdate(object.address, object.value)
end
end

Still curious to your use case (:

BR,

Erwin