[maxmsp] another way to do this?

there is the dedicated [osc-route] object available from CNMAT to  
route using slash-delimited addresses.

to cut a string (ahem, 'symbol') at a specific delimiter, i ported the  
c-string function [strtok] to a max external: http://www.jasch.ch/dl
http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/clibrary/cstring/strtok.html

as for simple substitutions there's also the stock [substitute]  
object, see patch below

hth

/*j

#P window setfont "Sans Serif" 9.;
#P window linecount 1;
#P message 66 105 141 196617 /deep/sea/creature/feature;
#P newex 57 224 32 196617 print;
#P message 57 87 88 196617 /tree/frog/jump;
#P newex 57 193 64 196617 fromsymbol;
#P newex 57 172 40 196617 itoa;
#P newex 57 151 85 196617 substitute 47 32;
#P newex 57 130 40 196617 atoi;
#P connect 3 0 5 0;
#P connect 6 0 0 0;
#P connect 4 0 0 0;
#P connect 1 0 2 0;
#P connect 0 0 1 0;
#P connect 2 0 3 0;
#P window clipboard copycount 7;