Whoops, I didn’t notice that part of the question at all. Let me elaborate on Matt’s answer.
In the earliest days of Panorama programming, Panorama had no variables at all. The only way to hold on to a value outside of a database field was in the clipboard, which as Matt points out, was also called the “scrap”. The earliest Mac’s also had a Scrapbook desk accessory that you could transfer text and pictures in and out of via the clipboard.
Since there were no variables, Panorama had a few statements that could work with the clipboard as a “poor man’s” variable, including getscrap and scrapcalc.
If this wasn’t an obsolete statement, I would agree. In 2019 Panorama makes it super easy to create and use variables, so I would recommend not using the clipboard as a variable in any new code. The only reason getscrap still exists is because some people have old databases that use it, and I really do try to maintain compatibility with existing databases and existing code to the maximum extent possible. However, I would recommend that no one should ever write any new code that uses the getscrap statement, so there is no point in renaming the statement.
I have added the text below to the help topics for the getscrap and getscrapok statements, to make it more clear that these statements are obsolete, and to add a historical note about the origin of the term.
The problem with the getscrap statement is that it clobbers the clipboard, which you may be using for something else. So if you are writing new code, don’t use the getscrap statement – use the [gettext] statement instead. Here is a version of this code that has been rewritten so that it doesn’t clobber the clipboard.
gettext "Area code:",AreaCode
Historical Note: The word “scrap” is the original name for the Macintosh clipboard from the 1980’s, so the name of this statement came from “get scrap”, i.e. get a value into the scrap, i.e. clipboard. Over the years the word “scrap” has gone out of favor and this feature is now usually called the clipboard, but the original term lives on in the name of this statement.