Hi,
On Mon, Sep 05, 2011 at 02:34:30PM -0400, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
On Sep 5, 2011, at 2:06 PM, Frank Barknecht wrote:
Here this sentence is true, but you know that not every data entity in Pd can be used in object boxes as name or argument, while most things that looks like a number will become one here.
I agree that the implementation does not match the descriptions in the manual.
We do not agree, because what I tried to say is that the implementation *does* match the description! :) In the Pd editor, i.e. in objects boxes, message boxes etc., certain things that look like a number will be converted to a number. ("+1" won't).
That's what is in important here. Yes, its possible to generate any kind of symbols using certain techniques, but it is not possible to generate any kind of symbol using any kind of symbol generation.
It is not possible to generate any kind of numercial symbol using the editor, and that's what the manual says. It's possible to generate "t_symbol"s using other techniques, if you need them, for example to get the string ".123" without it becoming "0.123". But this is nothing unusual, it's the same for pointers, gemlists, pdp-packets, probably GF grids etc.: You cannot "edit" these into a message box, but there are many objects that still will accept and create them.
Things that expect symbols would interpret the message from [makefilename %d] as a symbol, and things that expect floats would interpret the message from [makefilename %d] as a float. So the kind of thing I'm talking about would be like this:
[makefilename %d] | [float]
Then having the patch rely on the "error: float: no method for 'symbol'" error that is normally generated in that case.
Well, it prints an error because there *is* an error in the patch. The author should never have converted a float to a symbol and expect to still do float calculations with it.
Here are two similar errors:
[symbol three( | [+ four]
Ciao
Frank