t_symbol simple question

    petrus04
    Sep 25 2013 | 11:25 pm
    Hi, I want to make communicate maxmsp to another proprietary software via tcp protocol. I want to make the protocol as fast as possible between the two like there will be a large quantity of datas and different targeted objects datas sent between the two softwares.
    The system will include a management of objects present in max and in the other software, so that max patch will only have to send some message (name of the target object + name of the class + + type of datas + list...).
    To optimize the network protocol, i want to convert symbols living in max patches messages (or autopattrs) into value pointers : convert the strings into a unique id int16 or int32 know from the two softwares).
    To allow a huge quantity of different pointers (thousands or possibly millions), i would want to avoid a string comparison methods inside my max object.
    Is it possible in maxsdk to "scan" a patch, find the messages box attached to my c external, and only compare, i believe, t_symbols pointers to quickly find the id of the message? Same question asked easier : Do a message box contain a t_symbol pointer?
    If yes, i can compare a "t_symbol" table, it could really lower my cpu usage...
    If anyone can only say me where to look for in the sdk doc, it would me nice.
    thank you !
    • petrus04
      Sep 26 2013 | 11:26 am
      thank you very much for this informations.
      Anyway have you “measured” efficiency bottlenecks or is it just assumptions ? Take care about premature optimization, and take care to understand well the t_symbol pool mechanisms before going that far in convoluted designs.
      yes you're right, i know the danger about premature optimization, but i just thought that, in my targeted softwares, i use to create manually at least ten or hundred thousand of objects, so i am looking for an efficient way to point as fast as possible to the objects via network without comparing each object's name one by one by strcomparison method. Comparing into a int[] pointer is much faster than comparing possibly large string[].
    • petrus04
      Sep 26 2013 | 1:29 pm
      nice thx a lot, i look at this and will post later if everything goes good.
    • petrus04
      Sep 26 2013 | 1:53 pm
      I am coding an efficient UnityMax communication (and other game engines...protocol) like osc is quite slow, and not really designed in a tcp mind. Unity can instantiate a huge quantity of objects (you can do it by hand easily too), and the existing "mu" plugin is not well designed (i mean for optimization) in the unity c# part. In game engines, you manage objects mainly by their name like in 3d editors, typed by hand, or script generated.