Tree (octree)

[szaghi]

Hi Chris,

great project, my best compliments!

I would like to contribute if you like. In the past I have developed a generic container (based on an unlimited polymorphic class) with an octree structure (it was an hash table with single linked list for resolving keys conflicts on the single slot). I would like to contribute to your FIAT working on trees, how can I do?

Do you have some contributing guidelines?
Do you have some references for the trees you want to implement?
Do you have a preferred collaborative model (e.g. fork/pull-request)?

In my modest opinion, one of the worst lack of Fortran is the absence of generic containers, your FIAT is very appreciated.

My best regards.

[cmacmackin]

Hi @szaghi. Sorry I never got back to you about this. I've only now managed to do enough ground work to get a feel as to how I want this project to go. If you take a look at the wiki you'll see answers to most of these questions. In response to the specific question of an octree, I'm sure that could be useful. At present I don't actually know all that much about trees though and, in any case, my first priority is to get the linear data structures like stacks, queues, and lists working.

[szaghi]

@cmacmackin do not worry. Great work.

One key feature of trees is a list data structure, so I will study your work before trying to add an octree.

See you soon.

[cmacmackin]

Not much work to study, I'm afraid. The only final product (as opposed to things I'll need internally in FIAT) which I've built is a stack, but it hasn't been tested and I've since decided that the interface will need to be redesigned somewhat.

[SourcerersApprentice]

Hi Chris,

I would recommend taking a look at how the .Net Framework implements interfaces for classes like List, Stack and Queue. They have a well thought out high level interface that provides natural and informative method naming. While you might not want to adopt everything there, it could provide a good set of basics that would translate well to Fortran. Having done lists in both Fortran and C#, I find using methods like Index(), ToArray() and Contains() more handy than lower level methods that walk lists.

[cmacmackin]

Thanks, I'll take a look at that sometime. I did borrow a bit from the Vala library gee, which I suspect is similar. I'm not sure why I missed methods like index() and contains(). ToArray() might be difficult because of Fortran's really poor features for generic programming, unfortunately.

[cmacmackin]

I've added various methods inspired by the .Net Framework implementations now. As I say, I'm not sure if I'll be able to get something like ToArray() to work. Never say never though--I have some vague ideas which might be worth a try.