[PD] how to write different types to [text]

[Christof Ressi]

On 27.03.2022 11:01, Roman Haefeli wrote:
> On Sun, 2022-03-27 at 01:10 +0100, Christof Ressi wrote:
>> In my experience, commas in [text] are broken... Best not to use them
>> :-)
> What is the purpose of 'type' in [text] then? I find your advice of not
> using a feature because it is broken - frankly - disconcerting. If it's
> broken, then it ought to be fixed.

Sure. I was a bit tongue-in-cheek :-)

Currently, [text get] just strips all atoms after the first comma and 
outputs 1 (= colon) as the type. There is no way to get the rest of the 
message. I think [text get] could simply output all sublists 
consecutively. By checking the right outlet you know if a message spans 
a whole line (= 0), or is part of a comma seperated list of messages (= 1).

Another issue that you have mentioned is that we can't *set* lines that 
include actual commas. One simply solution could be to add a flag to 
[text set] that interprets the list as *escaped* text, just like [text 
fromlist]

The only case where commas do already work is in [text sequence -g]:

foo 1 2 3, bar baz

This//will indeed send the messages "1 2 3" and "bar baz" to destination 
"foo".

> Apparantly, FUDI uses both, commas and semicolons. In message boxes,
> they have a different meaning. The selector of a message after a
> semicolon is considered a send symbol. Everything after a comma i
> considered simply a message.

comma *atoms* always have that meaning. It just appears to be different 
depending on which level you look at it: "patch file" VS "patch"

A Pd patch files is really just a sequence of messages, and consequently 
it can make use of comma atoms as a shortcut, just like in your example:

> #X floatatom 26 77 5 0 0 0 - - -, f 5;

That's really the same as:

#X floatatom 26 77 5 0 0 0;

#X f 5;

(And you're right that it causes troubles when trying to parse Pd patch 
files within Pd.)

When comma atoms are used inside a patch (e.g. in message boxes, [text 
define], etc.), they have to be escaped in the Pd patch file:

#X msg 39 327 vis 0 \, vis 1;

(In [text] it appears as a symbol atom, so it can be set and retrieved 
with [text set] and [text get].)

Here's a combination of these two layers of meaning:

#X msg 49 252 foo 1 2 3 \, 5 6 7, f 20;

The first (escaped) comma belongs to the message box, but the second one 
will just send the following message to #X (= the current object).

---

As a side note: although the comma in

[foo 1 2 3, bar baz(

and

[;foo 1 2 3, bar baz(

might seem to have different functionality, it really is the same.

In the first case, the implicit receiver is the hidden /t_messresponder/ 
object, which just sends all messages to the message box outlet. 
Consequently, the message box will output 2 messages "foo 1 2 3" and 
"bar baz".

In the second case, there is an explicit receiver "foo", which will 
receive the messages "1 2 3" and "bar baz".

Christof
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