Best way to represent an outline?

[Michael Gilfix]

  This sounds like a great use for XML. But if you feel that's too
fancy, and it may very well be overkill, you just need to create
a simple tree structure. You could have a simple node class and
implement a simple tree that uses a list to store ordered children:

   class SimpleNode:
       def __init__ (self):
           name = None
           data = None
           order = [ ] # List of child names
           children = { } # Name - To node object mapping

   class Tree:
        def __init__ (self):
            self.root = SimpleNode ()
            self.root.name = "Root"

        def add_node (self, path):
            pass

        def find_node (self, path):
            pass

        # etc...

   Where a child can be a tuple of child name and object.
You can then search through the hierarchy. I used something
similar this to implement a simple file system cache. You
can also play tricks to increase speed. In my case, there
was no ordering involved, so I didn't need any ordering
and just used a child mapping. It's pretty straightforward
and you might feel more comfortable with it. Hope that helps.

            -- Mike

On Thu, May 09 @ 08:02, VanL wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'm trying to figure out the best way to represent an 
> outline, but I'm not sure what to use for each node:
> 
> A dict: This is probably the best fit, with the name serving 
> as a key to another dict with different types of content. 
> But the problem is that an outline is ordered, where dicts 
> are inherently unordered.
> 
> A class:  This would probably work, but I don't want the 
> types of items that I will include within each class 
> instance to necessarily be pre-defined.  So it seems like it 
> would be difficult to loop over the instance and discover 
> everything in a particular node.  Plus, even if I used the 
> __dict__, I still have the ordering problem described above.
> 
> A list:  This satisfies the ordering property needed for an 
> outline, but I'm not sure where I would stick the variable 
> content of each node.
> 
> Any suggestions?
> 
> TIA,
> 
> Van
> 
> -- 
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
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-- 
Michael Gilfix
mgilfix at eecs.tufts.edu

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