[PD] Help with "pack" / lists

[cyborgk at nocturnalnoize.com]

Okay more questions:

1. Why isn't [quarter( a symbol??? According to the manual it is, and I
quote: 'Anything that is not a valid number os considered a
symbol...Non-valid numbers which are read as symbols include things like
"+5" and "0..6" as well as words and names such as "Zack" or "cat". The
symbols "gore", "Gore", and "GORE" are all distinct.'

2. In the attached patch, I added symbols as you suggested. Why do I get
the output: "list setUnit quarter" for example, instead of just "setUnit
quarter"? Where is this list coming from--pack by definition creates a
list, so this behavior makes little sense. It seems to be interpreting
setUnit as a list, rather than a symbol.

Oh, and I can't use [list append] because I'm trying to combine two
symbols INTO a list, and list append doesn't like the symbol in the right
inlet.

3. How can I found out all this list stuff? It's undocumented in my PD
version... I never heard of [list append] or [list prepend] before, they
seem to work but I can't pull up any help files on them.

Thanks for the help, I just need to understand some things that are,
apparently, undocumented "features" or quirks or whatever... I'm working
on my mnmlPD project and there will definitely be patches to share with
the community when I'm finished. I'm trying to use the best practice and
make it as compatible and CROSS-PLATFORM as I can though, and use
externals as little as possble.

~David

> hi cyborg
>
> [pack s s] expects symbol and a msg like [quarter( is not direct a
> symbol.
> if you use a [symbol] object between the msg's and pack it will work as
> expected.
> i'd prefer [list append], which in this case works the same way.
>
>> want "1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0" to become "setPtn 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0".
> [list prepend setPtn] ;-)
>
> or you could use [glue] from zexy. i think that wants 2 lists.
>
> find lots of eastereggs!
>
> bye
>
> eni
>
>
> On Apr 13, 2006, at 9:56 PM, cyborgk at nocturnalnoize.com wrote:
>
>> The attached patch doesn't work... I can do it a different way, but I
>> want
>> to know WHY this doesn't work, and what would be a better approach. I'd
>> like to minimize use of externals as far as possible, but I do have the
>> pd-extended 0.38.4 ... Anyway, based on the help file for pack, I can't
>> see any reason why this patch shouldn't work.
>>
>> The more general question: without using prepend, how would I attach a
>> new
>> message on to the start of a given message, or a list of floats: ie. I
>> want "1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0" to become "setPtn 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0".
>>
>> Maybe this is stuff I need with the new list: but I can't use the help
>> for
>> "list" because I'm on 0.38.4, and it breaks in this version; and I
>> can't
>> use the newer pd, without breaking all my libraries that are already
>> installed (and nobody could explain how to make pd 0.39+ play nice
>> with my
>> current install on winXP). So I don't really even know what that [list]
>> object is supposed to do... When I send it a list, it just bangs!
>>
>> ~David
>>
>>
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>
>