OK, so someone asked what context my ugly reference question was in yesterday, and since what I'm doing might be useful for someone else, I thought I'd post the problem and my solution to see if (a) someone else could use it or (b) I'm reinventing the wheel and there's a better way commonly known.

OK, so this page structure on a web site:

1
|_2
|  \_5
|_3
  \_4

is stored as 'treepaths', like this:

1 => 001:000:000
2 => 001:002:000
3 => 001:003:000
4 => 001:003:004
5 => 001:002:005

that way, sorting them on these values brings them out in the desired display order.

Now, I want to display a lovely graphical tree depicting this, so I have 5 graphics and assign them values:

    - a blank square (0)
|#| - a page icon (1)
 |_ - an 'L' shape icon (2)
 |  - a vertical pipe icon (4)
 |- - a "t' shape icon (6)

So to create the correct matrix, I take the following rules:

1. create an initial matrix by sorting the treepaths and then splitting them on ':' and converting to a number
   

   1 0 0 
   1 2 0
   1 2 5
   1 3 0
   1 3 4
   

2. Then, parsing from right to left,
   • change 1st non-zero element to '1'
   • change next to '2'
   • change remaining to '0'
   ie

   1 0 0 
   2 1 0
   0 2 1
   2 1 0
   0 2 1
   

3. Finally, parse each element, going from bottom right to top left with the rule "For this element, if this element !=1 and the one below it is >=2, add 4. ie

   1 0 0 
   6 1 0
   4 2 1
   2 1 0
   0 2 1
   

Then just convert each number to the relevant icon and you have a pretty tree structure.

Or am I making a mountain out of a molehill?

cLive ;-)

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.