If I want to load a random soundfile (mp3 or ogg) from a given folder what's the easiest way of doing this? Are there wildcards that can be used in the filename path, or will I need to catalog the contents of the folder into a list or array and select a random element from that?

Also, on a related note, if I have Lame codecs installed in UbuntuStudio will PD be able to read mp3 files?

[playlist] from extended is very useful

Pd supports only a couple of uncompressed audio formats natively. You'll need some externals, I like [readanysf~] which supports loads of formats, but I think there are some others specific to mp3 and ogg. However, I couldn't get [readanysf~] to compile the last time I tried, because the FLAC library API changed or something...

Ok, so a bit of my newbie is showing: Is the extended version pre-compiled for Ubuntu in the repos? Is that the version that comes installed by default in UbuntuStudio?

The help for PD gives me this version number: 0.40.-2 but dpkg -l puredata gives me 0.40.2-2

If memory serves correct there are some other PD packages in the repos, but apt-cache isn't showing much right now. Where can I find these externals you guys speak of? Are there binaries? If I need to build them, should I build the whole package or just those that I need (any performance/stability issues with the whole thing)?

i doubt pd-extended will be in the ubuntu repositories, as it's a bit of a hack. you can download the package manually and install it with dpkg, as far as i know.

i think 'puredata' is pd-vanilla (ie, from miller's site), and 'pd-extended' (if in the repo, or else from wherever you get it) is pd-with-loads-of-modifications-and-additional-externals

I've run things mixed and matched before. Well maybe things have changed since the Good old days(TM)....

  
I started with 0.37 I think it was, and back then everybody used to keep their externals on their own site, like   
  
[http://ydegoyon.free.fr/software.html][0]  
and  
[http://alexandre.quessy.net/?q=node/67][1]  
and  
[http://pure-data.sourceforge.net/old/developer.php][2] (defunct?)  
  
Most of the time anything you compiled worked okay. So I had a vanilla Pd and most of the stuff from extended. At one point I replaced all the externals with ones from extended and kept the vanilla binary - and everything still worked (mostly).  
  
Can even swap a disk of externals between two machines running different Pd versions and everything works fine.  
  
But Pd has changed a lot recently (0.42) An isolated or unmaintained external will probably work, but if it doesn't then it's no use complaining, you have to follow the crowd to pd-extended.

[0]: http://ydegoyon.free.fr/software.html
[1]: http://alexandre.quessy.net/?q=node/67
[2]: http://pure-data.sourceforge.net/old/developer.php