Re the database example: I would consider this an implementation detail. It doesn't really make a difference whether you know the address of another object (in the general sense) in memory or its ID within some collection. Or (in case of N-N relations) a list of pairs of IDs of objects.

If I could store the data in any format I wished, it would be much easier, but sometimes I do not control the format. And sometimes even if I do it doesn't map to the data structure that best suits the needs of the task at hand directly.

I think I should have explained better what I am really after. I'd like to have a "reverse to XML::Rules". That is with XML::Rules I can tweak the tree structure of the data from a XML so that I can work more easily with the resulting structure. Where the original structure may be designed with a different task in mind or just be more general. Then I would like to have some reasonably simple way to "convert" the datastructure back to the original format. Or for that matter to a different format, but quite often one that was not designed for this particular task.

Jenda
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In reply to Re^2: Datastructures to XML by Jenda
in thread Datastructures to XML by Jenda

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