Re: [boost] Re: Automata Library

From: Jeremy Siek (jsiek_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-06-01 12:07:20

On Fri, 1 Jun 2001, Revuz dominique wrote:
> > Jeremy Siek wrote:
> > >ASTL looks neat... to bad the BGL wasn't around when you starting working
> > >on it. Have you thought at all about converting ASTL to use the BGL
> > >interface?
>
> No i didn't think about that ! Nor Vincent ;-)
> The BGL is very vertex oriented and we are very edge oriented.

Really? Could you explain this? (I don't see how BGL is oriented towards
vertices more than edges). Please use concrete examples.

>     I don't think wanting a implementation that is good for both task is  a good
> objective.

Very true. I am in favor of lots of different graph implementations...
BGL has a few and I encourage people to create more to fit different
needs. What I am *not* in favor of is lots of different intefaces for the
same abstract thing. Not only is it confusing, but it also inhibits reuse.

> It is a better idea to propose a general interface for data structures
> capable of storing automata or transducers or graphs in general, and
> then write algorithms that use this common interface, then the final
> user can choose the rigth implementation of the algorithm and the data
> structure in is own uniq case.

I could not agree more. That is why we developed the BGL graph concepts.

http://www.boost.org/libs/graph/doc/graph_concepts.html

What I'm trying to suggest is that maybe the interfaces we have defined
will work for automata algorithms (I'd be surprised if it didn't).

Cheers,
Jeremy

----------------------------------------------------------------------
 Jeremy Siek                        www: http://www.lsc.nd.edu/~jsiek/
 Ph.D. Candidate, IU B'ton          email: jsiek_at_[hidden]
 Summer Manager, AT&T Research      phone: [phone]
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