Editing Pure Data (section)

=== Data structures ===
One of the key innovations in Pd over its predecessors has been the introduction of graphical [[data structure]]s. These can be used in a large variety of ways, from composing musical scores, sequencing events, to creating visuals to accompany Pd patches or even extending Pd's [[GUI]].

Living up to Pd's name, data structures enable Pd users to create arbitrarily complex static as well as dynamic or animated graphical representations of musical data.  Much like [[C data types#Structures|C structs]], Pd's structs are composed of any combination of floats, symbols, and array data that can be used as parameters to describe the visual appearance of the data structure or, conversely, to control messages and audio signals in a Pd patch.  In Puckette's words:

{{blockquote|Pd is designed to offer an extremely unstructured environment for describing data structures and their graphical appearance. The underlying idea is to allow the user to display any kind of data he or she wants to, associating it in any way with the display. To accomplish this Pd introduces a graphical data structure, somewhat like a data structure out of the C programming language, but with a facility for attaching shapes and colors to the data, so that the user can visualize and/or edit it. The data itself can be edited from scratch or can be imported from files, generated algorithmically, or derived from analyses of incoming sounds or other data streams.|Miller Puckette<ref>[http://crca.ucsd.edu/~msp/Pd_documentation/x2.htm#s9 Pd Documentation Chapter 2 — 2.9. Data structures]</ref>|}}

[[File:solitude.png|thumb|600px|center|Score for Hans-Christoph Steiner's ''[http://at.or.at/hans/solitude Solitude]'', created using Pd's data structures.]]