Christopher Purcell

Hope you're all keeping happy and healthy.

I am using this time to try and learn Max. Slowly making progress thanks to resources like this forum, but I have hit an issue to which I cannot find an answer.

I have built a coll using numbers as the index value, and some text as the associated data for said indices. For the purpose of this example, imagine that these pairs are page numbers, and their corresponding chapter titles.

The coll contains a full list of every page number and chapter title in a book. For example:

What I want to be able to do is have the coll output the associated chapter name when any value within the page range is input. For example:

However, I don't believe this to be possible by using coll, without somehow re-populating the coll so that all of the 'blanks' in between the index values are also filled.

Is is possible to define a range of 'keys' using dict instead? Any other workaround for storing/retrieving data associated to a range of values?

Hope you're all keeping happy and healthy. 

I have built a coll using numbers as the index value, and some text as the associated data for said indices. For the purpose of this example, imagine that these pairs are page numbers, and their corresponding chapter titles. 

The coll contains a full list of every page number and chapter title in a book.  For example:

1, "Moonlight and Bloodshed"
16, "Their Clothes Smelled of Roses"
26, "Left Luggage"
43, "The College Silver"

15 = "Moonlight and Bloodshed"
32 = "Left Luggage"

Is is possible to define a range of 'keys' using dict instead? Any other workaround for storing/retrieving data associated to a range of values? 

Hope you're all keeping happy and healthy. 
I am using this time to try and learn Max. Slowly making progress thanks to resources like this 

dict-coll-keyindex-value-ranges

If your coll entries are sorted, you could use the 

 message to query the coll until your index is bigger than your page number.

If you need something more efficient, then you could (automatically) create another coll with an entry for every page, ± like this :

If your coll entries are sorted, you could use the next message to query the coll until your index is bigger than your page number.
Not very efficient, but possible.
If you need something more efficient, then you could (automatically) create another coll with an entry for every page, ± like this :

[funbuff] object could help. You could just populate it with the mapping of index -> index from the coll. If funbuff doesn’t have the index you request from it (e.g. 15) it will output its next lowest stored value (in your case 1). Then you could use that to lookup up the symbol from coll.

[funbuff] object could help.  You could just populate it with the mapping of index -> index from the coll.  If funbuff doesn’t have the index you request from it (e.g. 15) it will output its next lowest stored value (in your case 1).  Then you could use that to lookup up the symbol from coll.

Excellent! Thank you both - I sat and worked through the references to understand all solutions presented; [funbuff] appears to give the most succinct answer to this particular question. I had thought about using [scale] to try and 'compress' the incoming values to the index stored in the coll, but couldn't think of a way to update the variables; [funbuff] overcomes that perfectly.

Thanks again for sharing your knowledge here.

Excellent! Thank you both - I sat and worked through the references to understand all solutions presented; [funbuff] appears to  give the most succinct answer to this particular question. I had thought about using [scale] to  try and 'compress' the incoming values to the index stored in the coll, but couldn't think of a way to update the variables; [funbuff] overcomes that perfectly.

Dict / Coll - Key/Index Value Ranges?