[PD] httpget: fun with tcpclient and pdstring

Martin Peach martin.peach at sympatico.ca
Fri Mar 6 05:42:50 CET 2009


Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
> On Thu, 5 Mar 2009, Martin Peach wrote:
> 
>> Yes it seems to me a string manipulation object like [strncmp] should 
>> be able to accept symbols, floats, lists of floats, and messages 
>> naming arrays, on any of its inlets that are meant to accept strings.
> 
> By floats, you mean a single float representing a single character? If 
> not, then I suppose that any string made of individual float messages 
> would have to be converted to a list of floats first, so that it goes 
> well with all equivalent forms that use a single message per string.

Yes single character, any unicode character will fit in a float.

> 
> But now, La Question Qui Tue: if you do a [string append] on two strings 
> of different format, what should be the format of the output?

The first argument of the object would be the name of a table, with a 
[set( message to change it.

> 
> Actually, there's another killer question: if you do a [string append] 
> on two arrays, and that it is agreed that the output should go in an 
> array, in which array does the output go?
> 

If it's like a [strcat] it goes into the table named by its first 
argument, or the most recent [set( message. I think instead of using 
zero to terminate the string the destination table should be resized to 
the length of the resulting string.

>> Maybe it should be [arrble $1( or [tabray $1( so as not to prefer one 
>> over the other.
> 
> The problem with that is that the big-endians will think that "arrble" 
> connotes racial discrimination in favour of arrays whereas 
> little-endians will claim that it is "tabray" that is favoured. A more 
> politically correct way of constructing a new term would be by 
> interleaving the letters from both words (inspired by INTERCAL), like 
> "atrarbalye" or "taarbrlaey". This does not really solve the problem but 
> it reduces it by a large factor so that you can conveniently sweep it 
> under the carpet without making too much of an unsightly lump. This is 
> the glory of Psychological Engineering at work.
> 

But little-endians might just get confused by "elbrra" and "yarbat"...I 
think "eylabrarta" and "yealrbraat" would just compound the problem.

Martin





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