Hello all,

Sorry if this is somehow a newbie question. I'm quite familiar with Pd processes but this is the first time I'm trying to use this and couldn't seem to find a reasonable solution.

My problem is:

I have three numeric values that change simultaneously. I need them to be packed and sent as a list each time they change, so other abstraction can unpack/route them (doesn't matter) and deal with them later.

My problem is that Pack only sends output when banged at the first inlet, so it is outputting the list with the first correct value and the two others are the previous states.

For instance: 10 35 45 then it goes to 15 42 30, pack outputs 15 35 45.

The usual solution would be a [t b f] at each cold inlet but it makes Pack output three times the list, which could be problematic later.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Would this help? It assumes that in each "cycle" each value changes 1 time. In other words, it outputs a list as soon as 3 values have changed, no matter which inlet. Maybe you can refine it to only output when each value has changed.

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/packOnChange.pd

Yes, it works fine! Thank you so much for that.

But, on the other hand, I'm still curious on how [pack] deals with such issues. If you have three messages arriving at the same time you'll have always to create a workaround like you did? Weird =/

But many thanks, it solves my problem perfectly

The three messages will never actually appear at the same time. Everything is processed serially, and so each process will hit [pack]'s inlets one after the other. From the way it sounds, you're attempting to send three values to [pack] at the same time, but they're not hitting in the order you'd like them to. If so, there might be simpler options than what domien posted (though, I must say, it's pretty clever). One option is to ensure that the values are processed in the correct order, maybe using [trigger]. Another (perhaps simpler one as it might require less repatching) is to find out what order they are being processed and make sure the last one goes into [pack]'s hot inlet. Then you can reorder them with a message like this:

[pack f f f]
|
[$3 $1 $2(

Assuming the one you want to be the first in the list goes into the third inlet. This, of course, will only work if they are always being sent to [pack] in the same order. If not, domien's solution or the [trigger] method might be best.

Yes! Thank you for that.

I was thinking about the order they're coming and thought it would be like right-to-left order, but is not working like that and probably due to something else in the previous patching.

I'll do this to re-order the stuff, I didn't know about this thing with the message so I'll definitely give it a try.

Thanks for this thread it helped me a lot. I just wanted to say that having the second and third inlet values [bang] the first inlet, when they change, works too =)

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/pack_all_bang.pd

I had a similar problem packing ctlin outlets for further routing.

The control value bangs after the control number. The control number is used to route the control value to its place, so whoever got the control value, it was always one bang delayed. This was specially irritating because my controls would never go to zero (I made a simple drawbar organ).

I worked around this problem by inserting an extra value to the left of the pack, thus creating a dummy hot inlet. I fed the dummy hot inlet with the last banging signal (the control value), and then removed it with an unpack. Then I packed it again, this time with no dummy value.