This is how i see it:

OK, how about this...? (Maybe I actually understood something.)

I was thinking lately about "map" methods (take in a list, and output a list where some operation has been performed on every element).

That's a perfect case here, because the list operations (iteration and concatenation) are always the same, but the operation is different.

Here's what I came up with (and also added an analog to SC's Array.fill(n, { ... func ... })).

list-map.pd
list-fill.pd

... where the top right example prints "50 30 90 80 20 60". Unpack is because (inspired here by SC's do and collect) it may be useful to pass an index through.

This seems to work pretty well actually. As noted earlier in the thread, it's the user's responsibility to avoid name collision, but apart from that, this seems to fill a gap.

hjh

@ddw_music The list-abs library is worth a look.
It is entirely abstractions...... so vanilla.... and they are well named.
So well in fact that in this case it is the same as you have chosen..... [list-map]
Maybe it doesn't do exactly the same?
But all the tools are there I think.
David.

@whale-av

Ah.

So back to a core problem of Pd: many important features, that are basic operations in other languages, are external libraries in pd; external libraries are undocumented in core (which is reasonable); therefore basic operations (list-map is a basic operation...) are inaccessible from core, without forum assistance.

User impact is that I have to budget extra time for just about every class demo because I can't just look it up somewhere -- I have to wait for answers from the forum. Maybe I could search for it in 5 minutes, but a forum question might not be answered until hours later.

There really should be a list somewhere of external libraries' contents.

hjh

@ddw_music As your send inside the abstraction is static due to the creation argument it would be more flexible to just use [list-map] from list-abs and leave the send outside the abstraction.

As to your critique: There is no comprehensive list of externals as Pd is an open system, where everybody can make externals. Many are on Deken, others are just on some Github or website.

Here are some lists of externals/objects:

• http://write.flossmanuals.net/pure-data/glue/ (other areas on the lower part of the navigation)
• http://pure-data.sourceforge.net/old/documentation.php
• https://puredata.info/docs/ListOfPdExternals/
• https://archive.flossmanuals.net/pure-data/list-of-objects/introduction.html
• http://blazicek.net/list_of_pure_data_objects.html

I believe that any community effort to build a better, up to date and more beautiful list with tags, categories and more will be highly appreciated.

I'll add the new web interface for Deken:
https://deken.puredata.info/

I didn't really use it yet, but it might be helpful for finding externals and libraries.