Subj : human-readable nodelist format
To   : Scott Little
From : Jasen Betts
Date : Wed Nov 06 2002 06:31 pm

Hi Scott.

05-Nov-02 17:54:52, Scott Little wrote to andrew clarke

 SL> [ 05 Nov 02 10:31, andrew clarke wrote to Scott Little ]

 ac>> The hierachy is only important when it comes down to default mail
 ac>> routing, and politics. Parsing software should be able to handle

 SL> Thing is, this format requires at least two scans of the nodelist
 SL> to find a node and it's uplink.  The only shortcut is to assume an
 SL> uplink of /0 for normal nodes

Thats what indexes are for.  properly indexed it would requre zero scans
(just two lookups). there's no reason to make the index part of the standard
though, that's for the appliction developers to handle - they could even
import the wholw nodelist  it into a SQL database if they want :)

 ac>> goes on now to propose what should happen in future.  I do think
 ac>> a diff format that is standard (like GNU diff/patch) should be
 ac>> used rather than the obscure format used with nodediffs now.

 SL> "diff" has a mode that is more or less identical to the current
 SL> nodediff format

I concurr. the current noddiff format is very similar looking to a gnu/unix
diff format

 SL> It's no more difficult than back tracing "uplink" keywords until
 SL> you bump into a node that I'm able to connect to

as above, an index would definitely help with that,

 ac>> And I should add to the current spec that "keywords in the
 ac>> nodelist that are not recognised should be ignored"

 -=> Bye <=-

---
 * Origin: umop apisdn :zO palle> puel ay+ ui ajaymawoS (3:640/531.42)

.