is there an object that spits out the number of arguments inside an abstraction?

[dollarg] will give you the number of arguments and dump them out as a list. It's nice because, since you can parse the list however you want, you can allow your abstractions to have optional flags with varying number of arguments.

ah, nice - thanks, maelstorm!
just another question regarding abstractions. i built an abstraction that dynamically creates signal inlets and outlets, depending on it's arguments.
so far, that's ok - but if i embedded it into a patch and reopen the patch, all connections are gone (attended by some connection error messages in the pd window of course). certainly the reason for this is because the abstraction rebuilds the inllets and outlets at creation time. is there a way getting around that?

Hmm...I've never actually done it myself, but if I recall, using [initbang] instead of [loadbang] to trigger the dynamic patching is the answer. I'm not positive, though.

man, you saved my life!
that's it, thanx a lot!