[PD] coloring arrays

Mathieu Bouchard matju at artengine.ca
Mon Oct 24 15:37:49 CEST 2011


Le 2011-10-24 à 12:28:00, Quim Llimona a écrit :

> Data structures, maybe? But I guess it would be very inefficient for 
> large arrays (you would have to create an instance for each array 
> element).

AFAIR, float arrays are just plain data structures. At least, they use a 
built-in template defined in a hidden patch that is always loaded. That 
template just contains «float y» and nothing else.

This also explains why float arrays are efficient (in a normal way) in 
32-bit mode, but when you use 64-bit mode they are not anymore : pd's 
data-structures have that restriction that the smallest thing you can put 
in them is a «word», where «word» is defined as the biggest of float, 
symbol, pointer. In 32-bit mode, they all have the same size (4 bytes 
each), but in 64-bit mode, the latter two are twice bigger, so, the floats 
have to be padded.

Pd's data-structures don't have to be allocated as separate items. They 
can be allocated in array-fashion, as one big block.

What I say about Pd's data-structures doesn't apply to array-like types 
defined in other plugins, such as GridFlow, iemmatrix, iem16, Gem, PDP. In 
theory, plugins can use data-structures and define new stuff about 
data-structures, but in practice, no-one ever did.

  ______________________________________________________________________
| Mathieu BOUCHARD ----- téléphone : +1.514.383.3801 ----- Montréal, QC


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