Script check-->materials

Pout

This is my script:

ss.each{|e| 
     mat= e.get_attribute 'xdid_dict', 'sumatdisplay'
     if not mat
	     UI.messagebox("no material specs in dict.")
       
         
	     if e.material.display_name      
        UI.messagebox("has a material")
       else 
       UI.messagebox("has no material")
	     end	
     end
}

What i want it to do is:
A. See if the selected object already has dictionary attributes defined:

ss.each{|e| 
     mat= e.get_attribute 'xdid_dict', 'sumatdisplay'
     if not mat
	     UI.messagebox("no material specs in dict.")

These values are written in an earlier stage after some command is executed (this command writes the folowing values:

orig_name=e.material.name
           orig_materialtype=e.material.materialType
           orig_display_name=e.material.display_name
           orig_texture=e.material.texture
           orig_color=e.material.color
           orig_alpha=e.material.alpha
           e.set_attribute 'xdid_dict', 'sumatname', orig_name
           e.set_attribute 'xdid_dict', 'sumattype', orig_materialtype
           e.set_attribute 'xdid_dict', 'sumatdisplay', orig_display_name
           e.set_attribute 'xdid_dict', 'sumattexture', orig_texture
           e.set_attribute 'xdid_dict', 'sumatcolor', orig_color
           e.set_attribute 'xdid_dict', 'sumatalpha', orig_alpha

)
Question: Isn't it just possible to get the ID of the material the object has? Instead of the need to keep all these seperate variables?

B. Now i have noticed that fresh created objects who have no material attached do not have any material values (how does SU stores their color-visual representation?). So i check these:

if e.material.display_name      
        UI.messagebox("has a material")
       else 
       UI.messagebox("has no material")
	     end

This does not work. If there is no material assigned, then the script stops and does not sign "has no material". If there is a material assigned then the message "has a material" shows up ok.

Now maybe i'm a bit on the wrong path here, so i'll try to explain what i try to do:
Store the material-color (the visual part of an entity-group-...) in an attribute dictionary.
So when i do changes to them then i can get the original back.
It would be great if each material in SU had an ID and each object had this ID so i just have to store that one in the attribute dict.

Thanks!!