----- Original Message -----
From: Mathieu Bouchard matju@artengine.ca To: Jonathan Wilkes jancsika@yahoo.com Cc: Chris McCormick chris@mccormick.cx; Miller Puckette msp@ucsd.edu; "pd-list@iem.at" pd-list@iem.at Sent: Saturday, September 3, 2011 1:20 PM Subject: Re: [PD] (breaking symbols) was Re: find a list of numbers in a text file
On Wed, 31 Aug 2011, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:
Keep in mind that [list implode] must be smart enough to output the float atom "12" given the input "49 50". If it gives you
"symbol 12" then your
back to the [makefilename] madness from my original vanilla solution.
It's not that simple.
It needs to be that simple for the general case because Pd Vanilla has no (sensible) mechanism to convert a symbol atom into a float.
If symbol atoms which look like numbers to the naked eye are going to start flying around more freely in Pd then the docs need to explain how atoms are a kind of weird file cabinet where the label on the cabinet tells you which file-folder inside actually holds the data. So if you send the symbol-atom "15" to [max], the file clerk will complain because it's looking for a number but the label on the cabinet says "A_SYMBOL". (Additionally, if you tell the clerk to ignore the label and just pull out a number, the clerk will look in "A_FLOAT" and give you a "0", because the "15" is in the "A_SYMBOL" file-folder.)
Hm... is there a way you can tell the clerk to be a real go-getter when looking for a float atom inside a cabined labeled "A_SYMBOL" by just going ahead and seeing if the data in the "A_SYMBOL" file-folder looks like a number, and if so convert it to a float and send it on its way?
Also, I'm assuming [list implode] would accept and process a list at the left inlet, unlike [s2l] (which passes the 1st element to the right inlet).
People might not want always a cast to float, because then, it might destroy part of the information in the symbol.
see : http://lists.puredata.info/pipermail/pd-list/2006-09/042419.html
that's how [gf/s2l] is different : it outputs only symbols. I think I could make it an option, but I wouldn't know how to call it. E.g. :
[gf/s2l /, docast] [gf/s2l /, convert] [gf/s2l /, atof]
where the name after the comma is an attribute method taking one optional float arg defaulting to 1, just like all other flags in GF, defined like this :
\attr bool docast;
void cast_if_wanted (t_atom *foo) {if (docast) ........;}
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