send/receive local to patcher

Does something like this work? You would need to have [receive~] objects in the main patch for each of your [poly~] instances.

I recall posting these three characters to a thread before... pv?

My preferred mechanism for passing messages locally and privately within a patch? "They call them 'patch cords'."

Mine too, but I thought the OP was talking about passing specific signals from poly~ subpatchers out to the main patcher.

you cannot use send/~ receive/~ inside a poly~. period.

this is what i do:

Thanks for letting me know about using patch cords, I hadn't got that far in the manual yet.

And to everyone else, thanks for the help and examples.

My reason for wanting to do this: a sub patcher is getting crowded and I'd like to avoid having patch cords running across the interface while I'm working. It's a situation where there is one clock source being sent to several destinations. It would make things a lot cleaner using a send and multiple receives. I'd like to be able to name this something generic like clock, and afterwards, not have to worry about using that same variable name somewhere else without it picking up the messages going on in this subpatch.

I have a feeling the answer is no. I know I could get around this simply by adding a number to the variable name to make it unique. At the same time though, I think in alot of software languages, local and global variables are fundamental and commonplace. I'm just wondering if Max has this capability. So this question is philosophical just as much as it's practical.

hey rtech, did you check out
https://cycling74.com/tools/kneppers-oo-objects/
?

My post above, while it may have sounded simply smart-*ss, was actually expressing my Max programming "philosophy"/practice. send/receive and send~/receive~ use a shared namespace and are best thought of, in my opinion, as global channels of communication, rather than simply as substitutes for patch cords. The original post sounded to me like something that was most appropriate to patch cords, not global transmission/reception.

There are many ways to deal with the "patch cords are messy" problem: object positioning, segmented patch cords, hidden patch cords, color-coded patch cords, etc. Yes, one can use send/receive as a substitute, but it introduces some of the potential problems mentioned, such as indeterminate message ordering and conflicting use of shared names.

I see send/recieve the same way, as global communication. And I always use as few as possible. It would be nice however to have the option to make them local at times... to use them in a different way. Could be as simple as an option in the inspector called "global/local". In certain situations, the solutions for "messy patch cords" really aren't that great.