[PD] Finding "$0" and dealing with it in messages

[Frank Barknecht]

Hallo,
Mathieu Bouchard hat gesagt: // Mathieu Bouchard wrote:

> On Wed, 25 Nov 2009, Frank Barknecht wrote:
>
>> Single objects unfortunatly often behave inconsistently or not as one  
>> maybe would expect (e.g. [route list symbol] strips list- but not  
>> symbol-selectors).
>
> [route] is quite disappointing. I already made [route2] which doesn't  
> modify any message, and I'm gonna make [route3] which outputs "list  
> $1...$n" on any non-last outlet in a consistent manner (and without the  
> weird quirks that happen when you try using [route] for that purpose).
>
> To one who believes that abstractions and externals should have a Pd API  
> that is as similar to each other, [route3] should be obvious: it would  
> correspond more closely to class_addmethod.
>
>> all_about_data_types.pd doesn't even use the word "selector" anywhere.
>
> The pd 0.42 source code has the word "selector" once. This word was  
> introduced there in 0.39. On pd-list, there have been occasional uses of  
> the word 'selector' quite early. There's one early mention of 'selector'  
> (by none other than Miller) as early as 1998, but that seems to be an  
> outlier. After that you have to skip to 2001.
>
> Some stats now. Number of occurrences of "selector" per year (including  
> "file selector", and someone who said "selector" to mean "receiver", 
> etc):
>
>       num ratio
> 1998    1     3
> 1999    0     0
> 2000    2     3
> 2001   23    10
> 2002   28     5
> 2003   51     7
> 2004   70     8
> 2005   78     8
> 2006  455    39
> 2007  195    15
> 2008   74     8
> 2009  244    33
>
> (where the ratio is 1000 times the number of occurrences divided by the  
> total number of emails)
>
> AFAIK, "selector" is vocabulary that comes from Smalltalk and its  
> derivatives, or any "general OOP theory book" that considers Smalltalk to 
> be a reference. 

I encountered this in the SICP as well which is from 1984, so probably knows
its Smalltalk as well, although the index only mentions Smalltalk once in a
footnote.

Here's the intro to selectors:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-14.html#%_idx_1290

Ciao
-- 
Frank