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 ;-)

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