I have a pretty large patch that stores settings in a bunch of tables and uses textfile and l2s (from zexy) objects to load and save presets. Loading is working fine, but the l2s in the save function has started adding a backslash to the names of settings. Does anyone know why this would be the case and how to stop it? I built this patch a few years back, and have been revising it to make it functional as an abstraction, but even loading the stable version I saved before I started the revision now has the backslash added when I use the save function, which completely breaks it. I know this wasn't the case before since I was able to save a number of presets using the subpatch when I first built the instrument a few years ago, and those presets still load fine.

I've attached a picture of the subpatch. Output from the print objects I added look like this:

d: list reverbBypass 0
e: symbol reverbBypass\ 0
ef: symbol reverbBypass\ 0
f: add reverbBypass\ 0
c: symbol reverbBypass
b: symbol reverbBypass
a: reverbBypass

and the saved file looks like this for that line: reverbBypass\ 0;

I also tried just building a little l2s thing without all of the file saving apparatus and I also get the backslash there. See the second picture, in which clicking on the bang gives this:

postl2s: symbol testing\ this\ motherfucker
prel2s: list testing this motherfucker

The l2s object's help file says its default delimiter is a space, which is how it worked fine for me in the past. But now I get this backslash in there. I've tried setting new delimiters but I can't figure out how to set it to be a space. Other delimiters like a . or a zero character delimiter work fine like the help file shows.

Any ideas on how to get this backslash to stop showing up?

@catkisser666 Replace [l2s] with this vanilla abstraction....
l2s.pd
If you are going to share the patch you will have to rename this abstraction and all the instances in your patch.... and then bundle it with your patch..... something like [l2sym]..... as [list2symbol] also exists.
Otherwise you can add the abstraction to the zexy folder or the bin folder and delete the binary in the zexy library (I think...... save the binary elsewhere first just in case errors are thrown).
David.

@whale-av Are you using an old version of pd? I think all spaces are escaped on recent versions, I get escapes with that abstraction on 52.2. Here is a work around which inserts a non-printing space between the symbols, this should be safe regardless of what the devs do with escapes.
ltos.pd

Edit: forgot about floats, fixed.

@oid My bad...... I had tested it with 0.50 by mistake.
David.

Thanks you two. I used oid's replacement for l2s and added just a tidge as it was adding a space at the end of the string and I didn't want that. I also had to update the corresponding preset opening subpatch to work with the different space character, and replace the spaces in the saved presets, but that was easy enough to do.