Strange variable manipulation failure?

[charles day]

Fairlight wrote:

> Question:
> 
> 
> :'some condition:aa=mid(long_name,"4","16");long_name=aa:
> 
> This gave them the expected results--IOW, it worked fine.
> 
> But stranger yet, the following works:
> 
> :'some condition;aa=mid(aa,"4","16"):
 >
> Anyone else run into something similar?  I find it puzzling.  Known
> issue/feature with a rationale, or bug?  I'd think the rvalue would get
> evaluated first and the results stored in the lvalue variable last in any
> event, but from all appearances the variable types were treated differently.

aa=mid(xx,"num","num"); xx=aa

is the only way I have ever been able to make the value stick.

charles day