ref: 3f08446a85647ed6621388b23a4b6d9ee4db2050
dir: /README.md/
# treepack — file-tree marshaling
## Programs
* treeload directory file
* Loads a `file` into a tree rooted at `directory` according
to rules described later.
* treedump directory file
* Dumps a tree rooted at `directory` into a `file` in one of the
supported formats.
Currently `libucl` is used to read and write `file`s so that `UCL` or
`JSON` files can be loaded with `treeload`; and `JSON` (pretty,
compact), `YAML` (compact), and msgpack, can be dumped with `treedump`.
## Tree-making rules
* Tree leaves, that is non-object, non-array object members or array
elements become regular files with their key as the file name and
value as file content.
Key of array elements is their implicit zero-based index.
* Objects and arrays become directories named after their key. They
contain files and directories corresponding to child leaves or
other objects and arrays.
Let's consider a simple example with a structure in `UCL` format:
people = [
{name = "Alice", genius = yes, items = [phaser]}
{name = "Bob", genius = no, items = [cap, stick]},
]
The resulting file tree produced by `treeload` is as follows:
people/
0/
name -> Joe
genius -> no
items/
0 -> cap
1 -> stick
1/
name -> Alice
genius -> yes
items/
0 -> phaser
## TODO
* Write `treedump`.
* Write actual tree-making code instead of emitting a shell script.
* Rewrite as a Lua host (script?) driven by Lua tables.
* This way any structured format can be generically plugged in by
writing a binding and using it to fill a Lua table.
## NOTES
Cleaned up [ucl.h](http://a-b.xyz/eb/876b)