Ive reduced what Im trying to do as much as I can.

The problem seems simple:

I want to have an abstract that I can pass a filename in that is for a file of data. then graph the data.

I've tried a lot of things. None work. I would prefer not to use pd-extended, this is to go on a beaglebone and I don't want to have loads of stuff on there that I am not using.

So can someone tell me why [pack $1 s] doesn't recognize $1 and tells me it is the wrong type but does recognize the output from [makefilename $0-array] ? (passing in testdata.txt)

Why doesn't [makefilename $1.txt] recognize $1 and make a file name testdata.txt ? (passing in testdata)

[print $1] works. it seems to be the only thing that does in this context.

Sorry if I sound a bit frustrated but I have been trying this for two weeks, reading and testing lots of different ways.

I realise I am doing something wrong but for the life of me I do not know what.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Michael

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/pdtestabstract.zip

further to this:
I'm using Ubuntu Studio 13.10 on a desktop I built. pd version 0.44.3.

>So can someone tell me why [pack $1 s] doesn't recognize $1

>Why doesn't [makefilename $1.txt] recognize $1 and make a file name testdata.txt ? (passing in testdata)

Someone might correct me if I'm wrong here, but i get the feeling that pd will assume any creation arguments ($1,$2...etc) to be floats, at least in the case of objects like [route] and [makefilename] which accept different types of input.

This means, if you want to pass symbols through from creation arguments, you will have to explicitly pass those on through [symbol $1], etc

If you try:

[loadbang]
|
[symbol $1
|
[makefilename %s.txt]

i'm quite sure that should work.

BUT, in your case, it actually doesn't matter too much, because you can read your textfile into a table just by using:

[symbol $1]
|
[read $1.txt(
|

(or alternatively,

[symbol $1.txt]
|

|
|

Note, in your patch, you are trying to use "-resize", but i think this only works in the case of loading soundfiles with the [soundfiler] object , and NOT for loading textfiles. So, you need to manually resize your array, or always just make sure your array is bigger than the maximum size of textfile you will be loading.

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/pdtestabstract(edit).zip

Thank you so much. As you can probably tell I have little experience with PD. It is so simple when you know how!!!!

I hope I will help someone too soon, that way what goes around comes around.

Cheers

Michael

I'd say at least 50% of my inspiration comes from helping other people with their stuff, and seeing my own stuff from a different angle because of that. It's a real win win.