Changes

The parse graphs that we've been looking at so far bring us one step closer to the pointer graphs that it takes to make these trees live in computer memory, but they are still a couple of steps too abstract to detail the concrete species of dynamic data structures that we need.  The time has come to flesh out the skeleton that we've drawn up to this point.

The parse graphs that we've been looking at so far bring us one step closer to the pointer graphs that it takes to make these trees live in computer memory, but they are still a couple of steps too abstract to detail the concrete species of dynamic data structures that we need.  The time has come to flesh out the skeleton that we've drawn up to this point.

Nodes in a graph represent ''records'' in computer memory.  A record is a collection of data that can be conceived to reside at a specific ''address''.  The address of a record is analogous to a demonstrative pronoun, a word like 'this'' or ''that', on which account programmers commonly describe it as a ''pointer'' and semioticians recognize it as a type of sign called an ''index''.

Nodes in a graph represent ''records'' in computer memory.  A record is a collection of data that can be conceived to reside at a specific ''address''.  The address of a record is analogous to a demonstrative pronoun, a word like ''this'' or ''that'', on which account programmers commonly describe it as a ''pointer'' and semioticians recognize it as a type of sign called an ''index''.

At the next level of concreteness, a pointer→record data structure can be represented as follows:

At the next level of concreteness, a pointer→record data structure can be represented as follows: