Roald Baudoux

I want to get the length of a list made of symbols. Zl len doesn't 

return the correct length when it is smaller than 2 while Llength 

reduces actual length by 1 (but not when actual length is 1).

Please see both objects's behaviour with symbols and integers in 

attached patcher (tested on Mac Intel, Max 5.0.5 + lobjects UB 10_06).

I want to get the length of a list made of symbols. Zl len doesn't  
return the correct length when it is smaller than 2 while Llength  
reduces actual length by 1 (but not when actual length is 1).

Please see both objects's behaviour with symbols and integers in  
attached patcher (tested on Mac Intel, Max 5.0.5 + lobjects UB 10_06).

bug-in-zl-len-and-llength-with-lists-of-symbols

I, too, have stumbled over coll's 'symbol' convention. But after the first time most people get used to the idea.

Someone intimately familiar with the inner workings of the Max engine would need to comment on this, but I suspect the justification for the 'symbol' convention was at least in part an efficiency question back in the days of computers with 16MHz clock rates. Those days are gone, and I don't want to be a backwards-compatibility fetishist, but coll is such a ubiquitous object that changing the default behavior could break something like 90% of the patches in the universe. That's a lot of pain to obviate the need for a [route symbol] object.

Here's a present for your Clippings folder:

Someone intimately familiar with the inner workings of the Max engine would need to comment on this, but I suspect the justification for the 'symbol' convention was at least in part an efficiency question back in the days of computers with 16MHz clock rates. Those days are gone, and I don't want to be a backwards-compatibility fetishist, but coll is such a ubiquitous object that changing the default behavior could break something like 90% of the patches in the universe. That's a lot of pain to obviate the need for a [route symbol] object. 

Bug in zl len and Llength with lists of symbols?