Warning: Mavericks bug causes set_value with a list value to corrupt the property list file

[idpaterson]

Just an FYI for developers using this library (or otherwise interacting with property lists in AppleScript). In Mavericks there is a critical bug with property lists where setting the value to a list causes the property list to be zeroed out. Encountering a zeroed out property list file, error -1728 "not a property list file" will be reported.

Here is a simple example showing the problem. This does not affect records, nor does it affect records containing lists. Upon executing this script, you'll hit the error on the next line after adding the list value.

tell application "System Events"
    -- create an empty property list dictionary item
    set the parent_dictionary to make new property list item with properties {kind:record}
    -- create new property list file using the empty dictionary list item as contents
    set the plistfile_path to "~/Desktop/example.plist"
    set this_plistfile to ¬
        make new property list file with properties {contents:parent_dictionary, name:plistfile_path}
    -- add new property list items of each of the supported types
    make new property list item at end of property list items of contents of this_plistfile ¬
        with properties {kind:boolean, name:"booleanKey", value:true}
    make new property list item at end of property list items of contents of this_plistfile ¬
        with properties {kind:date, name:"dateKey", value:current date}
    -- comment out the next command to avoid the glitch
    make new property list item at end of property list items of contents of this_plistfile ¬
        with properties {kind:list, name:"listKey", value:{1,2,3}}
    make new property list item at end of property list items of contents of this_plistfile ¬
        with properties {kind:number, name:"numberKey", value:5}
    make new property list item at end of property list items of contents of this_plistfile ¬
        with properties {kind:record, name:"recordKey", value:{aList:{1, 2, 3}}}
    make new property list item at end of property list items of contents of this_plistfile ¬
        with properties {kind:string, name:"stringKey", value:"string value"}
end tell

There doesn't seem to be any acceptable workaround that could be done in qWorkflow. However, if you encounter this problem currently the best fix is to set the value as a record containing a list (make sure whatever reads the value expects this).

Sorry this isn't an issue with this particular project, but I think it would be good to leave it open until the problem is fixed in Mavericks.