Re: [boost] [filesystem] "leaf"

From: John Femiani (JOHN.FEMIANI_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-05-20 13:04:03

Beman wrote: 
> > in the context of a tree as being a thing with no children.  An 
> > interior node like a directory that has files or other 
> directories in 
> > it is usually not called a "leaf."
> 
> Right. And "leaf" never returns an interior node of a path.
> 
> >  I wonder if this is the best possible name?
> 
> The names used by the filesystem library were carefully 
> chosen as a matched set. So you can't change a single name 
> without making a corresponding change to the other names 
> (like "branch") it is related to.
> 

Is a tree a good way to describe a path? I mean, the path itself is a
basically a list of names right? Many of us think of the filesystem
itself as a tree (whether it is or not, at least it is a digraph).

To me a path is a sequence (a list) of connected nodes in a graph (or
tree), and this analogy shold hold with filesystem. A leaf is a node in
a tree with no out-edges, and the last node in a path may or may not be
a leaf.

I think that python (since somebody mentioned that already) uses a
'head' and a 'tail' to describe what filesystem currently calls the
'branch_path' and 'leaf' of a path. That makes sense since to me since
it captures the notion that a path is a sequence of names.

-- John Femiani