Short:        Semantic N-ary Filesystem Tree Generator
Author:       Wizardry and Steamworks
Uploader:     "Wizardry and Steamworks" <wizardry steamworks outlook com>
Type:         util/dir
Version:      2.4
Replaces:     util/dir/arbor.lha
Architecture: m68k-amigaos; ppc-morphos; ppc-warpup; ppc-powerup
URL:          https://grimore.org/computer_science/formalizing_our_complete_filesystem_tree_representation_model

-=:[ ChangeLog ]:=-

20260824
- make it multiarch!
- make sure that the binary emits a proper version like all AmigaOS programs
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: but all the executables
are to be found under the "c" folder after unpacking the LHA archive.

The arbor_test script uses the 68k binary to render some trees that are very
illustrative of the formalism and how it handles its edge cases.

-=:[ 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