[PD] type preservation of symbol

[cdr]

hi,
i'm not sure if this is a 'bug', or limitation of the pd 'language' - textfile, and it seems pool do not preserve the symbol type upon loading/saving and instead convert it to a list
for example a 'drip' on 2 lists from pool in memory:

_: symbol c:/program/vst/vocode/vox/
_: symbol voxfx morph ao
_: symbol c:/program/vst/vocode/vox/
_: symbol voxfx morph i to fictive

(this is exactly what i want...but scanning plugins takes a while and would prefer not to do it on each launch..)

so, after save/load.dat:

_: symbol c:/program/vst/vocode/vox/
_: symbol voxfx
_: symbol morph
_: symbol i
_: symbol to
_: symbol fictive
_: symbol c:/program/vst/vocode/vox/
_: symbol voxfx
_: symbol morph
_: symbol ao

and savex/loadx.xml

_: symbol c:/program/vst/vocode/vox/
_: symbol c:/program/vst/vocode/vox/

the results returned are completely different!.... the only reason i gave up on textfile was because typed_mess() kept segfaulting while the patch was trying to convert things back into the proper types w/ list2symbol...which is another story, but since at least in memory pool works as expected, perhaps the file format (XML seems suited to this at least) could be fixed? or this actually the expected behavior..

slightly kungfused,
carmen