beni shwartz

this is my first post so I’ll try try to adhere t the community standards. 

Im trying to understand patcherargs as I work my way through Gregory Taylor’s Step by Step.

When am I open the help file for patcherargs, the arguments are “1 foo 11.5 @squiggle 74”. Yet the messages coming out the left outlet are “basic foo 11.5”. can anyone help me understand where the “basic” comes from?

Hi All,
this is my first post so I’ll try try to adhere t the community standards. 
Im trying to understand patcherargs as I work my way through Gregory Taylor’s Step by Step. 

When am I open the help file for patcherargs, the arguments are “1 foo 11.5 @squiggle 74”. Yet the messages coming out the left outlet are “basic foo 11.5”. can anyone help me understand where the “basic” comes from?
thanks!

Hi All,
this is my first post so I’ll try try to adhere t the community standards. 
Im trying to understand patcherargs as I work my way thr

patcherargs-“basic”-output

Fine question, that’s kinda weird! I think what’s going on there is a non-obvious ramification of the way the .maxhelp file is written or rendered. What you are looking at in the “basic” tab of that file (see upper left corner) is actually like a subpatch named “basic” (as in [p basic] ). Thus “basic” is the first argument of the patcher and overrides the 1 in patcherargs.

(FWIW I opened up the .maxhelp file in a text editor and searched for ‘basic’ to see that there was a box with the ”text” attribute equal to “p basic”).

It seems to me that the help file ought to mention why that happens...

Fine question, that’s kinda weird!  I think what’s going on there is a non-obvious ramification of the way the .maxhelp file is written or rendered.  What you are looking at in the “basic” tab of that file (see upper left corner) is actually like a subpatch named “basic” (as in [p basic] ).  Thus “basic” is the first argument of the patcher and overrides the 1 in patcherargs.

(FWIW I opened up the .maxhelp file in a text editor and searched for ‘basic’  to see that there was a box with the ”text” attribute equal to “p basic”).

Wow! Thanks for the reply! Really appreciate it.

Wow! Thanks for the reply!  Really appreciate it. 

Patcherargs “basic” output