Short:        Semantic N-ary Filesystem Tree Generator
Author:       Wizardry and Steamworks
Uploader:     "Wizardry and Steamworks" <wizardry steamworks outlook com>
Type:         util/dir
Version:      1.4
Replaces:     util/dir/arbor.lha
Architecture: ppc-morphos
URL:          https://grimore.org/computer_science/formalizing_our_complete_filesystem_tree_representation_model

-=:[ ChangeLog ]:=-

20260821
- synchronize with the latest formalism
- add version and proper command-line arguments processing
- update test harness for more important tests

-=:[ About ]:=-

"arbor" is a command-line utility that reads paths from the standard command-
line input and then generates a visual tree by lookng at any overlapping path-
components. For example, the invocation:

arbor "/a" "/a/a" "/a/a/a" "/a/b/a"

will generate the tree:

root
 +
 |
 +---+ a
       +
       |
       +---+ a
       |     +
       |     |
       |     +---+ a
       |
       +---+ b/a

We wrote this utility because we find our filesystem-tree syntax way more
aesthetically pleasing and arbor does not rely on reading any actual filesystem
tree such that all the paths supplied on the command-line as input can be purely
fictive paths with "/" being the path-delimiter. With that said arbor should
work flawlessly on any architecture it is delivered for and works even better as
a scripting-language program (like node.js or python) but given minimalist
environments such as our beloved AmigaOS that cannot run complex JIT and/or
interpreters, we decied to release arbor as a C program instead.

-=:[ Usage ]:=-

Clicking the installer will copy the arbor binary to c: however you can also
just run the executable from its unarchived folder.

The first thing to try after unpacking is to run the "arbor_test" script
because it will run the arbor utility and it will show you what arbor does to
all the input paths passed to the command line.

After that, it is just a matter of running arbor with any paths as input in
order to genrate trees.

-=:[ Further Documentation ]:=-

For what it is worth, the entire N-ary representation is formalized on the
following page:

  * https://grimore.org/computer_science/formalizing_our_complete_filesystem_tree_representation_model

that also includes links to various other implementations as well as floppies
for LLMs in case you wish to expand the formal system to include other features.

-=:[ Copyright and Credits ]:=-

Icons are from flaticon.com and our own contributions are licensed:

(C) 2026 Wizardry and Steamworks, MIT