@João: ... for converting strings (lists of bytes, represented as pd floats) to floats (as in pd floats, a la C strtof() & friends) you can do some sick bad ugly and wrong things using [bytes2any] in conjunction with [locale] (e.g. by dynamically re-setting LC_NUMERIC) ... but maybe that wasn't what you meant...
maybe not, but I'll look at it. "sick and wrong" sounds always nice.