Editing Textual Output

The safest advice about editing the textual output from astWriteastWrite (or astShowastShow) is “don't!”—unless you know what you are doing.

Having given that warning, however, it is sometimes possible to make changes to the text, or even to write entire ObjectObject descriptions from scratch, and to read the results back in to construct new Objects. Normally, simple changes to numerical values are safest, but be aware that this is a back door method of creating Objects, so you are on your own! There are a number of potential pitfalls. In particular: