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Elliotte Harold <elharo@metalab.unc.edu> writes:
>
> Hunsberger, Peter wrote:
>
>
> > Which still leaves the original question; once you've got a way of
> > managing and manipulate graphs, why would you need a way to
> > distinguish trees? What does recognizing the special case get you?
>
> Because some things are true of trees which are not true of
> all graphs,
> the algorithms to process them can be made simpler and/or faster. For
> instance, you can do a depth first search or breadth first search
> without worrying about cycle detection.
>
That's exactly my point, if we ever got to the point where we could
manage graphs (in general) I don't think you'd need to care about trees
anymore. Internally, software might optimize the management of all
kinds of special cases (not just trees), but if we've got Michaels
non-instance specific network exchange capability then at an interface
level you shouldn't care anymore?
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