Greg Watson gwatson@lanl.gov writes:
An arbitrary graph seems to be adding additional complexity that we don't really need. Do you have an example of where a tree won't actually suffice?
The way interrupts are hooked up on most every board, I have seen including dec alphas.
When you add to that the problems of designing something that is multiplatform and must continue to use whatever format we settle upon potentially forever we need to be careful.
I admit that to work with an arbitrary graph between devices is a little harder to work with. Largely however this is 5 lines of code little.
The big advantage a tree has is for internal processing because you get a well defined order for operating on it. A graph does not have this property but as most of the structure will be a tree extracting the appropriate trees should not be difficult for a client.
The nice thing about s-expressions is that it deals with both the structure and representation.
None of this prevents use from using s-expressions, it simply means we can't use the most obvious application of s-expressions.
Eric