Re: [Boost-users] [BGL] - filesystem graph

From: Shams (shams_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-03-02 06:31:22

Thanks for the info.

1. Imagine a filesystem with just hard links ie. no symbolic links. Now I 
believe this is
a "directed acyclic graph" which is just a rooted tree, right?

2. Now imagine a filesystem with hard links + symbolic links. Now certain 
directories
may contain symbolic links to other directories or files. I want to 
represent this in
BGL, what is this type of graph called?

Thanks
Shams

-- 
"Aaron Windsor" <aaron.windsor_at_[hidden]> wrote in message 
news:2ed236020703010351x4f15c159g4e69e793012ed857_at_mail.gmail.com...
> On 2/28/07, Shams <shams_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I would like to know how to "best" represent a filesystem using BGL.
>> In this case the filesystem I want to describe is the unix/linux 
>> filesystem
>> and its various paths from the root node "/".
>
> Hi Shams,
>
>> My questions:
>> 1. What kind of graph is this filesystem and what is best to use in BGL 
>> to
>> describe this?
>
> The graph defined by the hard links is a tree. The BGL graph you use would
> depend on what you want to do. For instance, you might want to use a 
> directed
> graph with edges pointing from a directory to each of its contents, but 
> I'd have
> to know more about what you want to do to suggest anything.
>
>> 2. How can I also best describe symbolic links (symlinks) and what kind 
>> of
>> graph
>> would this be, does this graph defer from the above?
>
> Symbolic links can create cycles in the graph, so that the graph is no 
> longer
> a tree. You can use edge properties to specify the type of link an edge
> represents here - filtering on the hard link properties gives you a tree.
>
>> 3. How can I describe the metadata of a file (including symlinks) using 
>> BGL
>> eg. given a path /usr/bin/ls I also want to stores its creation date, acl
>> etc in BGL,
>> how can I best describe this, is there where properties come in handy?
>
> Yes, exactly - properties can be used to create a mapping between 
> vertices/edges
> and other types, i.e. mapping each vertex to a string or an integer.
>
>> 4. Are there any examples on this anywhere and/or does the BGL book 
>> describe
>> any examples on this?
>
> Yes, there are many examples online, and the book has an example of 
> building
> a file dependency graph.
>
> Regards,
> Aaron