[PD] symbol anxiety

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Tue, 24 Feb 2009, Frank Barknecht wrote:

> Is there a difference between symbols and immutable strings like Lua
> or Java have them?

Immutable strings are deallocatable.

If this happened to pd symbols that they became deallocatable, then 
externs couldn't keep a t_symbol pointer unless they register that they 
want it to stay alive. But if pd is to have a transition like that, it 
needs to have versioning of the pd interface used by externals, so that an 
external says that it wants it new-style, and that any old-style external 
receiving a t_symbol* will cause the t_symbol to become eternal.

New-style externs would also need to init and deinit t_atom[] structures, 
whereas old-style externs don't do it. SET-macros would be required 
instead of messing with atom fields directly. Most of the extra code could 
be avoided if using C++ instead of C.

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| Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801, Montréal, Québec