[PD] Help with "pack" / lists

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Apr 14, 2006, at 3:45 AM, Frank Barknecht wrote:

> Hallo,
> cyborgk at nocturnalnoize.com hat gesagt: //  
> cyborgk at nocturnalnoize.com wrote:
>
>> 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.'
>
> This is the part of the manual that is talking about object boxes.
> Messages are slightly different, so you should read "2.3.1 anatomy of
> a message" to learn more about symbol-messages. Or try
> http://puredata.org/dev/PdMessages for my try at explaining lists,
> symbols etc. Some more related docs are here:
> http://puredata.org/dev/PdDefinitions/


That reminds me.  At the bottom of PdDefinitions, there are Frank's  
and my stabs and writing clear definitions of all this stuff.   
Ideally, a third party should review all that and make a stab at  
unifying Frank's and mine into a final document.  I'm a stickler for  
details with this stuff, but I know my writing style can be too  
technical.  So more input would be good.

Any volunteers?

.hc


>
>> 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.
>
> [pack] outputs real Pd lists, which have a "list" selector at front
> unless the first element is a float. Everything is correct in your
> patch. If you want a "setUnit"-meta-message without the list selector
> you can split it off using [list trim] (pd>=0.39) or [route list]
> (others).
>
>> 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.
>
> This isn't quite true: [list] and [list append] perfectly accept
> symbol- and meta-messages in both inlets. I suppose you are running a
> Pd version which doesn't have the [list] objects yet. Older Pd
> versions still allowed you to create a [list] object, but it was non
> functional.
>
>> 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.
>
> You need to update your Pd. If you cannot do this globally, you should
> at least install some version of Pd-0.39 for testing purposes. [list]
> is exxxxxtremely conventient. After you've tasted its sewwt odour, you
> don't want to go back to list-less Pd again.
>
> "[list] for life." (Iggy Pop)
>
> Ciao
> -- 
>  Frank Barknecht                 _ ______footils.org_ __goto10.org__
>
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