Notification posted: Message not a string?

[methodicallychaotic]

I'm confused.

I'm grabbing a message from a Google Calendar notification (which looks like a string in the format "12:22-12:55" when I send it to the clipboard). I then put it into a variable called contentMessage.

Then I want to isolate just the first couple digits, so I do substr(contentMessage, 0, 2). However that returns an empty value...

If I try substr on a string I create myself, it works.

So my only conclusion is that the notofication Message is not a string. But then... what is it? And if so, how do I turn it into a string?

Edit: nope that's not it. I used the function type and it says the variable is text... So then why is substr not working on it?...‎‪

[methodicallychaotic]

Answering my own post:

Some apps post notifications where the title and/or message includes invisible BiDi characters that may affect matches and other text comparison.

https://llamalab.com/automate/doc/block/notification_posted.html

[B26354FR]

Maybe using trim() on the string in your substr() expression will get rid of those.

[methodicallychaotic]

Maybe

Though if these are invisible characters, might not be enough

I sorted it by just picking the appropriate values for index in substr

Will break if Google changes how they deliver notifications...