The hardest problem in computer science...

[Dan Sommers]

On Sat, 07 Jan 2017 00:03:37 +1100, Steve D'Aprano wrote:

> The *hardest* problem is naming things.

> 
>     Fiction
>     ├─ Fantasy
>     │  ├─ Terry Pratchett
>     │  │  ├─ Discworld
>     │  │  │  ├─ Wyrd Sisters
>     │  │  │  └─ Carpe Jugulum

[...]

> what do we call the vertical and horizontal line elements? I want to make
> them configurable, which means the user has to be able to pass an argument
> that specifies them ...

pstree(1) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pstree,
http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/pstree.1.html) calls them "line
drawing characters," and took a slightly different approach (I think) to
the command line argument(s):

The default is ASCII, or you can specify -G to specify the VT100 line
drawing characters (G for Graphic, I assume), or you can specify -U for
the UTF-8 line drawing characters.

Dan