On Thursday 08 May 2003 21:14, Miller Puckette wrote:
Hi all,
I always intended for "float 99" and "list 99" to be exactly equivalent in Pd. I think this has caused problems in trying to make certain objects compatible with Max, in which they may be treated distinctly (but never really _should_, I don't think, since it's too comfusing. Also, "list" with no argument is the same as "bang"...
cheers Miller
Oh man. For some reason, I still have some kind of mental block to understanding how the PD type system works. Once I thought I understood, until I read message such as these on the list, that throw me into confusion again.
Is there a document somewhere that is current and that explains all of this?
I am sooo confused!!!!
For example, Miller, you say that "float 99" should be equivalent to "list 99".
Now, first of all, one would think that a list of one element is not equivalent to a single element by itself (at least coming from the lisp world). Actually, though, this is easily resolved, since you could consider a PD atom as equivalent to a single-atom PD list.
The bigger question is, to my mind, is why "list 99" is equivalent to "float 99" and not just "99". Presumably, the atom after "list" is somehow automatically interpreted to be a float, so then why in the non-list case, do we need "float 99" and not just "99"?
Larry