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Yes, you can encode everything "as a tree". You can also encode everything "as binary", "as a big integer", whatever. That doesn't mean it's a good idea.
by jstimpfle 10y ago
Yes, you can encode everything "as a tree". You can also encode everything "as binary", "as a big integer", whatever. That doesn't mean it's a good idea.
- yellowapple 10y agoUnlike "as binary" or "as a big integer", a tree is structured. "As an arbitrarily-formatted string" would be much closer to those two comparison points.
- jstimpfle 10y agoIf you think strings (or "binary") are "unstructured", think again. (Start with: what does that even mean?)
- yellowapple 10y agoI don't think they're unstructured; rather, I know they're arbitrarily structured, usually requiring a great deal of ad-hockery to deal with them. A standard structure means a lot less work for data consumers and producers alike. This comment is structured in the sense that it's two paragraphs of more-or-less-correct English. That doesn't make it useful to tools that don't understand English. As far as a tool like 'rm' is concerned, it might as well be unstructured.