[PD] [almost OT] need suggestions for an implementation

[matteo sisti sette]

Frank wrote:

> Why care? [about how efficient pipe is] There's not much
> you can do about it, if it's too slow,
> except writing a better [pipe] in C/Lua/etc.

Well that's exactly why I need to know: to decide whether I need to
write a "better" [pipe] in Lua or not!!

> An approach carmen did
> in the past is to use list2symbol and symbol2list (the latter an
> external)

Yes that's an interesting solution! I usually try to go as far as
possible in pd-vanilla without any external.... but maybe I've reached
the "as far as possible".
You may argue that I am reluctant to use an external while I would use
pdlua, but one thing is to install an external that solves a specific
problem, another thing is to install one single extension mechanism
(pdlua) that allows you to develop any "externals" (especially when
we're talking of externals for manipulating data, not for using
hardware etc).

I think it's a pity that PD Vanilla doesn't include [symbol2list] or
any objects capable of "breaking" symbols a little bit (with which one
could build a symbol2list abstraction and maybe more), since it does
give the possibility to join symbols.

Note that with [makefilename] and using the standard syntax of
sprintf-like funcions (namely %.<n>s where <n> is a number) you can
take the first n characters of a symbol: if only there were a way to
take the remaining characters (or a way to know a symbol length + a
way of taking the last m characters), one could build a symbol2list
abstraction, or split a symbol into its characters etc.

.....well now I'm thinking the length of a symbol _can_ be calculated,
in a loop which at iteration k takes the first k characters and
compares the result with the whole symbol..... so the missing piece is
the possibility to take the last n chars... or is it not?


Thank you very much for the help.

Ciao
m.

-- 
Matteo Sisti Sette
matteosistisette at gmail.com
http://www.matteosistisette.com