Textual tree representation
From juliano.info
This is something I need every once in a while, and I have to spend a few minutes remembering the algorithm every time. This time I decided to make this note so that I'll have it here the next time I need it.
This is usually called an ASCII tree, but that name would be inappropriate to this one since I used Unicode characters. There are many other similar algorithms around, this one is the one I use.
#!/usr/bin/python # coding=utf-8 # tree characters TC = [ u" ", u" │ " ], [ u" └─", u" ├─" ] # example tree structure t = ( "root", [ ( "branch %d"%(a), [ ("leaf %d"%(b), []) for b in range(3) ] ) for a in range(3) ] ) def tree(r, brs=[]): """Print a textual tree representation of r and its children.""" name, children = r if brs: print ' '.join( [ TC[0][b] for b in brs[:-1] ] + [ TC[1][brs[-1]] ] ), print name for r in children: tree(r, brs + [r is not children[-1]]) tree(t)
