How could I search for a specific chs i.e: `chs(“../ptgroup”)`without hovering with the mouse over the available parameter….

thx in advance

gear menu in parameter interface > edit parameter interface

RMB on the node or parm
choose View Dependences from menu
set View to:References
there are all nodes/parms that your node/parm is referencing (is depended on)
by clicking on any of them you will see the expression that is referencing any parameter
by clicking to small arrow next to it you will jump to referenced node/parm

@tamte and others,

This should probably be obvious to me, but...

The info on how to find channel dependencies, above, was super useful, but if I have an entry like ch("../num_thingies") in a parameter, how do I find where the num_thingies parameter is defined? (I'm trying to debug a huge hip file that is not my own -- it has thousands of nodes and many layers...)

Thank you!
Mary

Nodes and their parameters in Houdini are just like a file system on disk. "../num_thingies" is a relative path pointing to the parent node of whatever node you currently have selected, so check the parameters on the parent node of whatever node you're looking at for the source.

Thanks so much! I had hoped it was a directory structure, but when I couldn't find the parameters I got confused. (There are gazillions of parameters on this node...) It turns out they were invisible parameters. I should have realized there was such a thing...

Thanks again!
Mary

Another helpful technique is to open a textport (Alt + shift + t) and type "opfind num_thingies" and it will report back to you every node that has a reference to it.