Dear Monks,

this might be rather an algorithmic question instead of a perl-specific one, but then again, I need the solution to be implemented in Perl, so...

Given a set of things - say Objects - how do I best represent and infer dependencies between them. E.g.:

X ----- Y --+-- Z
            |     ,-- 5 ----+-- O
            |    /          |
1 ----- 2 --+-- 3 --+       |
            |       |       |
            +-- 4   |       |
                    |       |
                    |       |
A --+-- E --+-- G --+-- H --+
B --+       |
        F --+

[download]
The above is just a visualization of some facts like "Y requires X", "Z requires Y and 2", "H requires G and 3" and so on. Also, the other way round "3 allows for 5 and H",

basically every member of this graph should be able to say what he requires or what he allows for. My questions are:

Any suitable object to represent this already available at CPAN? This reminds me of the module dependencies so there should be an implementation already.

What is the best way to declare such dependencies? Similar to @ISA when declaring inheritance?

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this.

Bye
 PetaMem     All Perl:   MT, NLP, NLU

In reply to Dependency Inference by PetaMem

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