Occasionally, a patch spits out "Bad number" errors in the Max window, with no reference of where they came from.

Searching here on the forum produced several topics about this, all without an answer.

In my case, I get the following orange-coloured message without a reference the object that produced the message: "left: bad number"

It happens on recall of a preset by sending a number to pattrstorage. Despite the error, the preset is recalled fine, so once again: what does "bad number" mean and where does it come from?

Occasionally, a patch spits out "Bad number" errors in the Max window, with no reference of where they came from.
Searching here on the forum produced several topics about this, all without an answer.

It happens on recall of a preset by sending a number to pattrstorage. Despite the error, the preset is recalled fine, so once again: what does "bad number" mean and where does it come from?


bad-number-errors

Nobody? Can someone from Cycling '74 shed light on this strange errors?

(I know, I'm being impatient..sorry about that)

Nobody? Can someone from Cycling '74 shed light on this strange errors?
(I know, I'm being impatient..sorry about that)


This is a generally harmless error that happens when something is expecting something other than what it is getting, like, using a symbol to set an attribute of an object when it is expecting an integer.

I'm guessing you are sending the symbol 'left' to something that doesn't understand it.

This is a generally harmless error that happens when something is expecting something other than what it is getting, like, using a symbol to set an attribute of an object when it is expecting an integer.  

So it's a type mismatch basically? Other objects generate different errors for this (as in the help file of the [error] object, where the message 'poof' is sent to an object that doesn't understand messages.

Anyway, I can't remember to produce the message 'left' anywhere in the patch in question, but I'll take a look to see if anything gets data it shouldn't receive (which is quite a lot of work since there is no reference to the error-producing object and it's a big patch).

Thanks for your response.
So it's a type mismatch basically? Other objects generate different errors for this (as in the help file of the [error] object, where the message 'poof' is sent to an object that doesn't understand messages.

Anyway, I can't remember to produce the message 'left' anywhere in the patch in question, but I'll take a look to see if anything gets data it shouldn't receive (which is quite a lot of work since there is no reference to the error-producing object and it's a big patch).


to find the object the bad number is referencing, you can open the max patch in a text editing program, and do a search for the object the max window is referencing. 

this will give you more information about the object type. I find especially useful the exact visual location of the object which will help you find exactly which one it is. 

when you look at the inspector for any object in your patch, you can see these location.

top left X position. top left Y position. X width. Y height

to find the object the bad number is referencing, you can open the max patch in a text editing program,  and do a search for the object the max window is referencing. 
ex: obj-899
this will give you more information about the object type. I find especially useful the exact visual location of the object which will help you find exactly which one it is. 
when you look at the inspector for any object in your patch, you can see these location.
looks something like : 1102.345.125.100
which is coordinates of object 
top left X position. top left Y position. X width. Y height

Hi, I know that this is an very old post, but dealing with these sneaky errors its really pain...

What do you mean by max window is referencing? How do I get obj reference number? I was searching a way to find those IDs using internal system or JavaScript, but never had luck.

In this kind of situation, max console is just absolute horrible...

Hi, I know that this is an very old post, but dealing with these sneaky errors its really pain...
What do you mean by max window is referencing? How do I get obj reference number? I was searching a way to find those IDs using internal system or JavaScript, but never had luck.
In this kind of situation, max console is just absolute horrible...


"Bad number" errors?