How to turn an AppleScript list into a string - list

Question

Trying to learn how to use AppleScript records and lists to their upmost potential I've been trying to create a report of a BBEdit project but I'm finding very limited documentation. I asked a question yesterday trying to figure out why my find pattern wasn't working but after finding out that the issue was from me lacking returning results:true I was able to get the result record and I verified it was a record after reading Class and running:
class of findFunction
Since it says it's a record I reviewed here and ran length of findFunction and count of findFunction and they both returned 2. I was curious to know what the two items were in the record so I used return findFunction and was told there was:
found: true
found matches: list of X items
Wanting to know where and what files the matches were located in the list, I did some more searching and read Lists and records and ran:
set theMatches to get found matches of findFunction
it returned the list items and checking the new variable with get count of theMatches I am able get the quantity of items in the targeted list inside the record. When I review what's in the list (learned from: How to get a value from a list with a string in AppleScript? and Searching for items in list) I am able to conclude that when using the find in BBEdit every item in the list contains:
end_offset :
match_string :
message :
result_file :
result_kind :
result_line :
start_offset :
Experimenting with an item I set a variable with:
set itemOne to get item 1 of theMatches
and checked to see if it worked with:
display dialog (result_file of itemOne) as text
and a dialog with the full file path was displayed. Trying to utilize DRY I created:
set filesResult to get (result_file of (get item 1 of theMatches)) as text
Wanting to add any of the mentioned above to a file with something like:
set filesResult to get (result_file of (get item 1 of theMatches)) as text
set theMessage to get (message of (get item 1 of theMatches)) as text
set combined to filesResult & ":" & theMessage
I recalled being able to use the clipboard and found Set clipboard to Applescript variable? so I added:
set filesResult to the clipboard
make new text document
paste
but my issue I'm running into is how can I take every item in the list found_matches and add it to the clipboard an item on each line? I thought about using a repeat but I get an error when I try:
repeat with x from 1 to (length of matchesItems)
set filesResult to get (result_file of (get item x of theMatches)) as text
set theMessage to get (message of (get item x of theMatches)) as text
set combined to filesResult & ":" & theMessage
end repeat
With a message of:
The variable matchesItems is not defined.
So how can I get every item from the list into the clipboard with every item on it's own line so I can paste all items from the clipboard into a new file?

Answer 1

To clarify wording
theList = {A,B,C} -- this is a list with 3 variables
theRecord = {A:something, B:somethingElse, C:somethingElseTwo} -- this is a record.
A list can be addressed by its index.
theList's item 1 -- A
A record can be addressed by its keys
A of theRecord -- something
To get all items of a list into a string repeat it by its index (saying every item is of type text)
set finalString to ""
repeat with thisItem in TheList
set finalString to finalString & thisItem & return -- the return creates a new line
end repeat
Then you have finalString to do with whatever you like.
To get every item of a record you have to know it's keys (if it's not a ASOC NSDictionary)
set finalString to ""
set finalString to finalString & A of theRecord & return;
-- repeat last line with every key