ref: a89274a190cae04738d909c09ab678c0f550ae0f
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.