[PD] >, <, &&, || etc

[Jonathan Wilkes]

--- On Mon, 4/6/09, Martin Peach <martin.peach at sympatico.ca> wrote:

> From: Martin Peach <martin.peach at sympatico.ca>
> Subject: Re: [PD] >, <, &&, || etc
> To: "Mathieu Bouchard" <matju at artengine.ca>
> Cc: "pd list" <pd-list at iem.at>
> Date: Monday, April 6, 2009, 5:50 AM
> Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
> > On Sun, 5 Apr 2009, Martin Peach wrote:
> > 
> >>> The shell's [] (/usr/bin/test) also has
> -gt,-lt,-ge,-le,-eq,-ne, which it uses for numeric
> comparisons, whereas it uses >,<,>=,<=,==,!= for
> string comparisons. It also needs both by design.
> > 
> >> Sure, but bash is written in c and it can call its
> functions whatever it likes because they are built into the
> program. (It will also try to interpret your file name if it
> isn't alphanumeric)
> > 
> > The reason why I listed those examples is not to say
> that you could just use the special punctuation instead of
> letters. I'm just pointing you to what looks like a
> standard notation for writing those same concepts as
> letters, so that you write >= as "ge" instead
> of "greaterthanorequal" or
> "greaterequal" or "greq" or any other
> long and nonstandard combination.
> > 
> > That's all I mean. Do you understand?
> > 
> 
> Oh I see. But that notation is only standard in shell
> languages and is not going to help someone guess the name of
> the object or what it does, especially if they are not used
> to english. You could name [or] just [o] for example...a
> saving of one letter in exchange for an infinite increase in
> uncertainty. It would contribute to making Pd a secret
> language for initiates who bang until.

Are you saying that initiates would know a secret way to bang until that does not cause Pd to freeze?  Or, that an infinite increase in uncertainty would dull the users' senses so much that they could no longer tell the difference between an operational and frozen patch?

Pd is already a secret language for initiates.  Even your hypothetical beginner is required to guess the name and functionality of what should be a standard object.  But I imagine the work everyone is doing on organizing libraries by category will go a long way towards remedying that.

-Jonathan



> 
> Martin
> 
> 
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