Re: [boost] [Boost Review] Property Tree Library

From: Eric Berdahl (berdahl_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-04-21 14:36:55

On Apr 21, 2006, at 12:32 AM, Andy Little wrote:

>
> "Andy Little" wrote
>>
>> Did you consider a generic tree design? If so
>> why did you reject it in favour of this one?
>
> Just to refresh... The above is the most interesting and yet  
> unanswered question
> about property tree for me.

As I've lurked in this discussion, this is the question I've had in  
the back of my mind, too.

Some of the most useful (imho) elements of the standard c++ library  
are collections. We don't spend much time anymore writing associative  
arrays, variable length arrays, or linked lists. Instead, we have a  
zoo of containers provided in the library and just populate them with  
data. I have long wondered why there aren't more attempts to do the  
same for a tree, something that separates the "tree-ness" of the data  
structure from the "data-ness" of the data structure similar to the  
way that std::list and std::map isolate data from structure.

Along those lines, I have regularly used an open source  
implementation of a generic tree structure that I have come to dearly  
love: the forest class from the Adobe Source Library <http:// 
opensource.adobe.com/group__forest__related.html>. If it's not  
terribly overreaching, I humbly suggest that adobe::forest would be a  
good model for boost to adopt as a generic tree structure.

Disclaimer: I am an Adobe employee and a sometimes contributor to the  
Adobe Source Library.

Regards,
Eric

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