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Quick question about [coll] data…


Brian H.
Jun 04 2009 | 6:08 am

Is there a way or technique to account for blank items in a [coll]? For example, if a line of data is banged out into [unpack] and then each outlet to it’s own processing, it needs to see the same number of items in every line, right? Or is there a way around that, other than using a random ‘placeholder’ character and trying to weed it out correctly?

Thanks,
Brian


Patrick Delges
Jun 04 2009 | 8:56 am

[pack ] will unpack lists longer or shorter than the number of its outputs. Just try.

But if the length of the list coming from [coll] is important, you could get it with [zl len] and route your datas to different processing.


Holland Hopson
Jun 04 2009 | 7:29 pm

Another trick is to store data in pairs with its label. Something like:
0, data1 12 important_stuff 15 rarely_used_stuff 22;
Then you can split the list into pairs and use [route] to parse the data appropriately.

I’ve also been known to use send/receive names in conjunction with data in colls. That way you can split the list into pairs and send the data directly to its destination via [forward].

These attribute-like techniques make the order of data in the coll unimportant. But they don’t necessarily help if you want to detect null data.


Luke Hall
Jun 04 2009 | 11:44 pm

If you want to output something for an empty index in a [coll] then you can do something like the example below. Remove the [zl rot] if you make it into an abstraction as a [patcheragrs] in a [patcher] will always report the patcher name as the first argument. I hope it helps.

lh

— Pasted Max Patch, click to expand. —

Brian H.
Jun 07 2009 | 6:05 am

This is a great help, thanks!

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Forums > MaxMSP