hmarstra

Im using max 4.5, so hopefully this is not an outdated problem

What is the common approach to deal with list-operations for lists over 256 items

Coll takes f.eks only 256 items. Same with message object and alot of other objects

I found out that text-object can take more, but I have still problems when I want to do different kind of groupings (zl group 2) etc

(The latest problem is working with the Interleave object which takes inputs from message boxes so again I have the same problem of the 256 limit)

What is the common approach to deal with list-operations for lists over 256 items
Coll takes f.eks only 256 items. Same with message object and alot of other objects
I found out that text-object can take more, but I have still problems when I want to do different kind of groupings (zl group 2) etc

(The latest problem is working with the Interleave object which takes inputs from message boxes so again I have the same problem of the 256 limit)


the-256-list-problem

The 256 list element limit is gone in max5. Max4.6 has a few ways round it, but you're better off upgrading really. The mxj list package can deal with larger lists, and if you have jitter there are a few options too. Search the forums, there should be loads of old posts about this providing they haven't gone awol in the website upgrade.

There are list objects as Java classes deep in Cycling74's folder:

Open /MaxMSP 4.6/Cycling '74/java/help/listpackage.help

I don't remember what's their size limit.

if you download the berkeley cnmat objects collection (here : 

 , they have somewhere a nicely done patcher telling how to deal with those limits, with several solutions. Max 4 release still available, if i read well. But yes, the best way to deal with that would be an upgrading to max5...

if you download the berkeley cnmat objects collection (here : http://cnmat.berkeley.edu/downloads) , they have somewhere a nicely done patcher telling how to deal with those limits, with several solutions. Max 4 release still available, if i read well. But yes, the best way to deal with that would be an upgrading to max5...


In max 4.x there were no real limitation on the list size, but most of the objects were limited to 256 items as you experienced. Besides the "mxj list.*" and jitter matrices objects you can also have a look to my ejies, there's some java classes which deal with long lists.

Thanks for advice. I will study them. Im doing a project with the colorblobs object so I cant updatee to max 5 yet.

another vote for CNMAT.
FTM may be another solution.

In the message box reference page it says "Any message of up to 256 items can be contained in a message box." Presumably this is incorrect? I'm using the latest version of Max.

another solution would be to avoid using such long lists (dont laugh).

Yeah, but I'm not looking for a solution. :) I was just asking for clarification: I'm confused why it says in the reference page that the maximum length is 256 items, when I have no trouble storing and transmitting longer lists than that using a message box. Of course, they could have just forgotten to update the reference page, I just wanted to be sure that I wasn't missing something.

Message boxes can now contain many more items. If you're using [zl] objects and you need them to work with lists of greater than 256 items you need to set a maximum as the first argument before the zl mode name. For example: [zl 512 group 300]

On a similar, but related note, the [zl] help patch says that the default maximum number of items is 256... if you know ahead of time that you don't need that many items, does changing the maximum to a lower number use less memory?

it does indeed. You'll probably have to use a lot of them before noticing anything though ;-)

In the CNMAT Spectral Tutorials they speak about lists in Max 5:

In the CNMAT Spectral Tutorials they speak about lists in Max 5:
http://cnmat.berkeley.edu/patch/2741

The 256 list-problem