Hello,

So I've been working on this abstraction that is supposed to select a random element from a 'to use' list, without repeating until every element from the list has been selected.

Each time the list is fed in, another 'check' list stores what index has been used, checking to see if the random index generated has been previously used. If it hasn't, that index is used to pick from the 'to use' list. If the index has been used previously, then a new random number is generated.

If the length of the 'to do' list and the 'check' list are the same, then the 'check' list is cleared and the process starts from fresh.

Okay, so the abstraction I've made technically works. However, I am getting a nasty stack overflow problem when the 'check' list resets. When I trace the error from Pd says that it's coming from the [list-abs/list-find] abstraction I'm using.

Here's the patch: patch.zip

I'm struggling to find a way of getting over this error. Sort of stumped. Any help / a simpler way of getting around this problem would be great...

@me-andmymonkey I think this is the easy way (edited)....... this.pd
David.

@whale-av Nice!

Another method using [list store]: list-urn.pd

This uses a vanilla urn abstraction: vurn.zip

Hey all, this is a really tidy solution to the problem. I was not aware of the 'urn' object. I assume this is a Max thing that's been brought over to PD.

@whale-av by index I mean, the position of a value in a list message. I hope that makes sense!

@ingox really interesting! I still haven't really dived into the [text] object. I'm still only getting my head around lists.

To make things a little bit more complicated, I also wanted to make it so that instead of totally clearing the 'check list' in my patch (that stores the index values), the list keeps the final 5 values. This would mean that when the 'check list' resets, it still won't output the last 5 values from before the last reset.

I've figure out a way of doing that using [list split] that seems to work well. I'd be curious as to how it would work with [text].

Anyway, thank you both so much. This is great.

@me-andmymonkey Yes, for lists check out the list-abs library, all vanilla abstractions. Other things can be build using list-drip: https://forum.pdpatchrepo.info/topic/11122/faster-list-drip-with-list-store-pd-0-48.

With [text] you can sometimes do more because you can directly access lines. So a list would have to be organized vertically in lines. You can also drip a list into a [text], modify the contents and [text sequence] the contents into a [list-store] to have a list again. These are most of the time some effort to build, but all is doable.

@me-andmymonkey Here it is with array just for completions sake and you can decompose audio with it so why not. Too keep the last 5 elements just drop in a [sel 5] after the first [array size], left outlet would stop the next iteration and maybe load the next set of number, right outlet would feed [array size]
aurn.pd

@oid right on. Thanks very much. Lots of learning in this stuff. Thanks everyone.