I'm looking for as much info on commands i can send to a canvas. If someone could point me to a good tutorial on dynamic object creation that would be the bees knees.

Here is a reduced example of what I'm trying to do. my question is it possible to have the sum~ and the outlet~ connect upon creation?

Thanks!

#N canvas 227 149 580 461 10;
#X obj 64 370 namecanvas thing;
#X msg 161 291 \; thing obj \$1 50 catch~ \$2 \; thing obj \$1 90 outlet
;
#X obj 206 213 makefilename channel%d;
#X obj 161 252 pack f s;
#X obj 161 184 t f f;
#X floatatom 161 158 5 0 0 0 - - -;
#X obj 161 212 * 100;
#X connect 2 0 3 1;
#X connect 3 0 1 0;
#X connect 4 0 6 0;
#X connect 4 1 2 0;
#X connect 5 0 4 0;
#X connect 6 0 3 0;

sum~? and the outlet you create is a not an audio object. but besides this, if you want to connect the single catch~ objects to an individual outlet~ you have to find an algorithm, but yeah it's possible. "connect" finds objects by the order they were created, zero based.
you may want to have a look at this: http://puredata.hurleur.com/sujet-2953-winds-doom-soundscape-generator
in this soundgenerator, you can change the number of voices, what means, the single voice abstractions get created and deleted dynamical.
maybe you find some help in there.

just for your example:

#N canvas 527 79 1024 728 10;
#X obj 62 407 namecanvas thing;
#X obj 206 213 makefilename channel%d;
#X obj 161 252 pack f s;
#X obj 161 212 * 100;
#X msg 161 291 \; thing obj \$1 50 catch~ \$2 \; thing obj \$1 90 outlet~
\;;
#X obj 134 154 t f f f;
#X obj 32 241 pack;
#X obj 38 180 t f f;
#X msg 32 348 \; thing connect \$1 0 \$2 0 \;;
#X floatatom 132 108 5 0 0 0 - - -;
#X obj 32 211 + 12;
#X obj 62 211 + 13;
#X connect 1 0 2 1;
#X connect 2 0 4 0;
#X connect 3 0 2 0;
#X connect 5 0 7 0;
#X connect 5 1 3 0;
#X connect 5 2 1 0;
#X connect 6 0 8 0;
#X connect 7 0 10 0;
#X connect 7 1 11 0;
#X connect 9 0 5 0;
#X connect 10 0 6 0;
#X connect 11 0 6 1;

this works like this: you have to count all objects that exist in the patch before any object is created dynamically (also atom boxes and message boxes). in this case these are 12, but you have to count them zero based, so there are 11, starting with object number 0. the 2 objects you want to create dynamical are consequently object number 12 and number 13. by adding 12 and 13 in the structure on the left side to connect message as arguments i tell the canvas to connect these two objects (always from outlet 0 (the first outlet) to inlet 0 (the first inlet)). but caution: this only works, if you start with 0 and increase step by step. if you e.g. start with 1, the structure will add 12 respectivly 13 to 1 from the number box. so it trys to connect object 13 to 14. but object 14 still does not exist...
if you accidently create 2 objects twice, it will not work too. and it would be good to add a feature to delete object pairs if you decrease the number again. so this is just a starting point, there's much work left for you!

oops, I drew up that example and posted a bit to hastily. Thank you very much for your reply, connect is the command I was looking for. You mention dynamically deleting objects, is it as simple as telling a canvas to remove foo object?

thanks again

almost.... .
you can do it several ways, one would be via the "find" (to find an object by it's name (not possible, if there are several objects with the same name)) and "cut" commands or via "mouse"(find objects by it's coordinates) and "cut" command (like in the patch i linked to in my first post).

hmm... sounds like a pain. Luckily it won't be necessary as the objects will be created dynamically in the abstraction based on a creation argument, but it's good to know none the less. Thank you very much!!!