[PD] "popping" from - and prepending to - a generic message

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

Check out the [list] object, it'll do what you want.

.hc

On Feb 7, 2007, at 8:25 PM, Matteo Sisti Sette wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Is there a reasonably stright-forward way in pd-proper (I mean,  
> without
> externals) to do either of the following two things?
> 1) Removing the first element of a message (NOT necessarily a list)  
> and
> returning the rest of the message
> 2) Prepending a symbol or number to a message
>
> But I mean: this must work with ANY message, without knowing its
> "composition" (whether it starts with a number or symbol, how many
> "elements" and of what type it has, etc.)
>
> For example, let's say I get a message which is [foo 1 2 3(
> Removing the first element should give me [1 2 3(
> But if the message is [1 foo 3 4 5 bar( it must give me [foo 3 4 5  
> bar(
> and so on.
>
> I will omit examples for the "prepend" thing :p
>
> Solving problem 1 would indeed allow solving problem 2 (not so  
> "stright
> forward" though:)
> Not viceversa, as far as I can see.
>
> I came up with a rather tricky solution for (1) but it involves  
> "scripting"
> (dynamically adding and connecting objects in a canvas by sending it
> messages) and I'm finding out that PD is quite buggy when you start  
> using
> that sort of things. When trying to use it to solve problem 2, I  
> ended up
> with a patch that makes pd crash (but it shouldn't). However, I'm  
> still
> trying to isolate the bug before I submit it to the bug tracker.
> Furthermore, the solution to (1) alone works fine but generates  
> some errors
> in the pd output (because I intentionally use "unpack s" and  
> "unpack f" at
> the same time so that only one of them matches and produces output).
>
> Which by the way raises a secondary question: is there a way to  
> turn off/on
> error reporting?
>
> Also I found an almost as tricky (and not elegant) solution to  
> problem 2
> alone, without "scripting" but which requieres the message not to  
> exceed a
> fixed maximum length (number of "elements"). And it generates "unpack
> mismatch" error messages too.
>
> If anyone is interested I can share the mentioned patches, but  
> first I was
> wondering if I am missing a much simpler solution.
>
> I know there are externals that do this sort of things, but I like  
> doing
> things natively in pd whenever I can, and this is also a speculative
> curiosity.
>
> Thanks
> M.
>
>
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