• From: "Liam R. E. Quin" <liam@f...>
• To: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@m...>, "xml-dev@l..." <xml-dev@l...>
• Date: Thu, 04 Jul 2019 16:46:17 -0400

On Thu, 2019-07-04 at 13:45 +0000, Costello, Roger L. wrote:

> Are there other ways to represent binary trees in XML?

Many. But it's mostly in the details; stand-off markup (flat) and
directly nested are the two most common. Note that arbitrary graph
structures can't be descried as pure trees, so you need either a hybrid
approach or (simplest) the flat/standoff approach.
 
> Of the two ways to represent binary trees shown above, which way is
> easier to process with XSLT? Which way is easier to process with
> other programming languages?

It doesn't make much difference. The id/idref approach allows for
indexed access.

> If you have used the recursive approach, have you encountered
> problems with XML parsers failing on deeply nested elements?
Years ago, yes (with SGML too).

But tail recursion, where available, usually eliminates that.

Liam



-- 
Liam Quin, https://www.delightfulcomputing.com/

Upcoming courses: DocBook (sold out)
                  CSS for XML People, DC area, USA: August

• References:
  • Representing binary trees in XML … flat versus recursive
    • From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@m...>