[patcherargs] flexible list items

    Brian H.
    Nov 17 2018 | 6:04 am
    Hi, I want to have an abstraction that takes a list of variable length as an argument. I also want to have a default list, in case there is no argument. It seems like once there is a list argument in [patcherargs], the flexibility of the number of items is gone.
    In the example below, the default argument is a 5 item list. If I override the default with my own argument, and it has *fewer* items than the default, then a list of my argument + the end of the default argument.
    What's the logic I'm missing here? Thanks, Brian
    • Bill Canty
      Nov 18 2018 | 6:00 am
      I couldn't work that out either a few months ago, so I made a workaround with [zl reg] and a delayed [loadbang]:
      With any luck someone's got a better method.
    • Roman Thilenius
      Nov 18 2018 | 8:17 am
      the only thing you can do is to filter out "0" - which means that "0" can also not be used in cases where you want it. works great for say, a list of symbols as argument-to-patcher.
      otherwise... you can always use quotation marks (yes that sucks) and send your list as one symbol into the patcher. in this case it can also be longer than 9 elements.
    • Brian H.
      Nov 22 2018 | 5:47 am
      Do you guys think this is a bug? I don't see it as expected behavior...
    • Bill Canty
      Nov 22 2018 | 6:08 am
      My guess is that it's not a bug. One could expect one's own argument to completely override the default list, as with [zl reg]. But what happens isn't unusual in Max either, e.g. [pack] does it.
    • Bill Canty
      Nov 22 2018 | 6:58 am
      But currently it works in a very silly way, like Monty Python. ;-)