Thanks for your help. It took me a while to figure out how 'list append' works, but I finally managed to get it working. I've attached the patch (intended to be used as an abstraction, invoked from another patch, which returns the data read from the file in a list).
I have another question, though. How do the files get closed? When you exit PureData? Does that mean that every time you open a file, another system file handle is used and not released until you exit PureData? Or is there some way to explicitly close the file and release the file handle, buffers, etc.?
David.