> maybe not exactly the goal here but: if get/set would need only the name of the variables and not the template,
 
this is already possible! you just have to use "-" for the template name and the template will be deduced. See the help patch for [set] and [get].
 
Christof
Gesendet: Samstag, 04. Januar 2020 um 01:14 Uhr
Von: "João Pais" <jmmmpais@gmail.com>
An: Kein Empfänger
Cc: pd-dev <pd-dev@lists.iem.at>
Betreff: Re: [PD-dev] capabilities of data structures with externals
maybe not exactly the goal here but: if get/set would need only the name of the variables and not the template, it would make it somewhat easier to use the same patch for different purposes. e.g. [get x y z] instead of [get somenameherewhichcanbeusedonlyinonespecificpatch x y z]
 
I guess an other way of making it faster to use pointers in complex situations would be to assign pre-defined symbol-names to pointers (which would be fixed like any other variable), instead of the codes assigned internally - but maybe that's not really feasible to program.
 
And to add my two cents -

The "pointer/get/set" approach to manipulating data is horribly clunky,
both unintuitive and inefficient.  If you can think of a better way I'd
love to hear it.

It seems to me that patch languages are badly suited to this kind of task -
but if one were to design a text-language style interface, what language
would be suitable?  Or indeed is there a compleetely different way to think
about it?  I've been wondering about this since Pd's start around 1997 :)
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