Hey there, I recall from the tutorial that pd uses depth-first when triggering signals and thats what [trigger] is for. Well I'm trying to read keyboard input and I'm piecing together a message that gets passed to [route] but I'm having all kinds of trouble.

When I press a key using this patch, the keydown parameter is late. That is the first message is "shift 0" and the second message is "shift 1".

The next thing I tried is to use trigger on the right (cold) input to pack. However, now I'm receiving duplicate messages. I get "shift 0" "shift 1" when pressing and then "shift 1", "shift 0" when I let go.

A pragmatic solution that seems to work is simply reordering things and using the message box to select the other elements.

This works as expected. The result is "shift 1", "shift 0".

But I'm still a bit confused. I'd imagine that in a more complicated program, this sort of refactoring might not be possible. Or it might be hard to find or debug. So I'm wondering, is there a way to get this all to work without switching the order of the arguments going into pack?

Thanks!

@ccorcos No..... your last method is correct....... because the atoms are not packed until the left, hot inlet is banged, and the [keyname] object follows the rules. So the name is dropped out of the right outlet of [keyname] first.
But as you say, being able to re-order with dollar variables allows all sorts of message mangling in Pd, and is very useful.
In your first example the keyname is sent straight away.... before a value has arrived... hence "shift 0" first.
In your second example both the name and the value are banging the [pack]....... hence the double message.
http://puredata.info/docs/manuals/pd/x2.htm part 2.3.3.

You need to store the name and append the value......... and then send the message.... which is a "list".

So the easiest solution is to use a [list] object......
The keyname is stored, and then prepended to the value. This adds a message "tag" ..... list...
But [list trim] can be used to strip away the tag, or [route list].

It is worth taking the time to read the article I have linked to above (but stop before chapter 2.9).
The way lists are tagged, and can then be routed, is at the very heart of Pd.

Here is the [list] method.... and a third way (just for fun.....)
order.pd
David.

I see. So the hot-cold, left-right right ordering is more integral to pd than I realized. I suppose it makes sense from a technical perspective, but it means there's more to think about! Thanks a lot for the response. This really clarified some things for me.