NAME Tree::Node - Memory-efficient tree nodes in Perl REQUIREMENTS Perl 5.6.0 or newer is required. Only core modules are used. A C compiler to is required to build the module. INSTALLATION Installation can be done using the traditional Makefile.PL method: perl Makefile.PL make make test make install (On Windows platforms you should use `nmake' instead.) SYNOPSIS use Tree::Node; $node = Tree::Node->new(2); $node->set_child(0, $left); $node->set_child(1, $right); while ($node->key_cmp($key) < 0) { $node = $node->get_child(0); } DESCRIPTION This module implements a memory-efficient node type (for trees, skip lists and similar data structures) for Perl. You may ask "Why bother implementing an ordered structure such as a tree when Perl has hashes built-in?" Since Perl is optimized for speed over memory usage, hashes (and lists) use a lot of memory. So the purpose of this package is to provide a simple low-level Node class which can be used as a base class to implement various kinds of tree structures. Each node has a key/value pair and a variable number of "children" pointers. How nodes are organized or the algorithm used to organize them is for you to implement. There is no Pure-perl version because this package was written to overcome limitations of Perl. REVISION HISTORY The following changes have been made since the last release: 0.05 Fri 22 Jul 2005 - removed _rotate_children method - renamed SIZE macro to NODESIZE - fixed bug where node size allocation was too small! - renamed _increment_child_count to add_children - add_children accepts a list of children to add (so it can add multiple children) - added get_children method to return an array of children - readonly flag is set (this was disabled in v0.04) - documentation updated accordingly - added developer tests See the Changes file for a more detailed revision history. KNOWN ISSUES This module implements a Perl wrapper around a C struct, which involves a blessed reference to a pointer to the struct. This overhead may make up for any memory savings that the C-based struct provided. This module uses the C `malloc' function, which may cause problems on versions of perl earlier than version 5.7.2. SEE ALSO Tree::DAG_Node is written in pure Perl, but it offers a more flexible interface. AUTHOR Robert Rothenberg Suggestions and Bug Reporting Feedback is always welcome. Please use the CPAN Request Tracker at http://rt.cpan.org to submit bug reports. LICENSE Copyright (c) 2005 Robert Rothenberg. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.