[PD] (breaking symbols) was Re: find a list of numbers in a text file

Jonathan Wilkes jancsika at yahoo.com
Sun Sep 4 19:54:50 CEST 2011


----- Original Message -----

> From: Martin Peach <martin.peach at sympatico.ca>
> To: Jonathan Wilkes <jancsika at yahoo.com>
> Cc: Mathieu Bouchard <matju at artengine.ca>; "pd-list at iem.at" <pd-list at iem.at>; Chris McCormick <chris at mccormick.cx>; Miller Puckette <msp at ucsd.edu>
> Sent: Sunday, September 4, 2011 1:10 AM
> Subject: Re: [PD] (breaking symbols) was Re: find a list of numbers in a text file
> 
> On 2011-09-03 22:47, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:
>>  ----- Original Message -----
>> 
>>>  From: Mathieu Bouchard<matju at artengine.ca>
>>>  To: Jonathan Wilkes<jancsika at yahoo.com>
>>>  Cc: Chris McCormick<chris at mccormick.cx>; Miller 
> Puckette<msp at ucsd.edu>; "pd-list at iem.at"<pd-list at iem.at>
>>>  Sent: Saturday, September 3, 2011 1:20 PM
>>>  Subject: Re: [PD] (breaking symbols) was Re: find a list of numbers in 
> a text file
>>> 
>>>  On Wed, 31 Aug 2011, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:
>>> 
>>>>    Keep in mind that [list implode] must be smart enough to output 
> the float
>>>>    atom "12" given the input "49 50".  If it 
> gives you
>>>  "symbol 12" then your
>>>>    back to the [makefilename] madness from my original vanilla 
> solution.
>>> 
>>>  It's not that simple.
>> 
>>  It needs to be that simple for the general case because Pd Vanilla has no 
> (sensible) mechanism to convert
>>  a symbol atom into a float.
>> 
>>  If symbol atoms which look like numbers to the naked eye are going to start 
> flying around more freely in Pd
>>  then the docs need to explain how atoms are a kind of weird file cabinet 
> where the label on the cabinet tells
>>  you which file-folder inside actually holds the data.  So if you send the 
> symbol-atom "15" to [max], the file clerk will
>>  complain because it's looking for a number but the label on the cabinet 
> says "A_SYMBOL".  (Additionally, if you tell
>>  the clerk to ignore the label and just pull out a number, the clerk will 
> look in "A_FLOAT" and give you a "0", because
>>  the "15" is in the "A_SYMBOL" file-folder.)
>> 
>>  Hm... is there a way you can tell the clerk to be a real go-getter when 
> looking for a float atom inside a
>>  cabined labeled "A_SYMBOL" by just going ahead and seeing if the 
> data in the "A_SYMBOL" file-folder looks like a
>>  number, and if so convert it to a float and send it on its way?
> 
> Any external can do that easily enough if it wants to by using sscanf with a 
> format string:
> 
> int symbol_to_float (t_atom *atom, t_float *afloat)
> {
>     int n;
>         n = sscanf(atom->a_w.w_symbol->s_name, "%f", afloat);
>         return n; /* afloat is valid if n is 1 */
> }
> 
> But there are more ways of writing numbers than a single sscanf call can handle, 
> so a real version would have to check all the expected input styles.
> 
> The function pd_defaultsymbol in m_class.c is the default symbol handler for 
> objects that have no explicit symbol method. It could check to see if a 
> non-default float method exists and if so try to convert the symbol to a float 
> for the float method to eat.

Right-- at that point it's already just going to output an error anyway.

> 
> Martin
>



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