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

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Sep 6, 2011, at 12:30 PM, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
>
>> From: fbar <fbar at footils.org>
>> To: "pd-list at iem.at" <pd-list at iem.at>
>> Cc:
>> Sent: Tuesday, September 6, 2011 3:53 AM
>> Subject: Re: [PD] (breaking symbols) was Re: find a list of numbers  
>> in a text file
>>
>> On Tue, Sep 06, 2011 at 09:44:33AM +0200, Frank Barknecht wrote:
>>> I'm not sure what "appears in the patch" should mean. It
>> definitly means
>>> that numercial-symbol selectors don't get shown and cannot be  
>>> written
>>> into a patch, so you cannot use them in the editor where "real"
>>> selectors should be written, like in [route].
>>
>> Forgot to add: Of course it is possible and legal to "use" numerical
>> or
>> non-printable symbols as selectors, but they have to be constructed
>> dynamically and cannot be typed, in accordance with the restrictions
>> mentioned in the manual. Instead something like this can be used:
>>
>>   [makefilename %d]
>>   |
>>   |                  [makefilename %d]
>>   |                  |
>>   [select symbol-dummy]
>>
>> I used [makefilename %d] a lot in the rj library's [m_chorddict]
>> dictionary for chords, where some chord names are proper symbols,  
>> like
>> "m7", while others are floats like 7. The float-names get converted  
>> to
>> symbols internally to look up chord notes in a data structure array
>> keyed by symbols only (using [m_symbolarray]).
>
> At what point are you using numerical-symbol selectors?  Everything  
> you've
> described has the selector 'symbol'.
>
> If you mean you let the user send symbols or floats as the key and  
> convert
> internally, that's _exactly_ what I'm proposing.

I guess I'm not clear on your proposal.  Is it that a "symbol"  
selector automatically converts things to a symbol?  That makes a lot  
of sense, and would help with other issues.  Then you could also make  
symbols with spaces, like:

[symbol 43(
[symbol /home/hans/My Documents(

etc.

A quoting mechanism would also help.  We could probably get away with  
only \.  For example, \ for spaces, like:

[symbol /home/hans/My\ Documents(
[symbol I\ like\ lots\ of\ \ \ \ \ spaces(
[symbol commas\,\ in\ symbols(
[symbol semi-colon\;\ in\ symbols(

And last but least, and its already in there:

[symbol \43(
[symbol \-21343(
[symbol \-0.2e59(

Anything that just \ couldn't cover?

.hc



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