Crate cactus

An immutable parent pointer tree -- also called a cactus stack.

A cactus stack is a (possibly empty) node with a (possibly null) pointer to a parent node. Any given node has a unique path back to the root node. Rather than mutably updating the stack, one creates and obtains access to immutable nodes (when a node becomes unreachable its memory is automatically reclaimed). A new child node pointing to a parent can be created via the child function (analogous to the normal push) and a parent can be retrieved via the parent function (analogous to the normal pop).

use cactus::Cactus;
let c = Cactus::new();
assert!(c.is_empty());
let c2 = c.child(1);
assert_eq!(c2.len(), 1);
assert_eq!(*c2.val().unwrap(), 1);
let c3 = c2.parent().unwrap();
assert!(c3.is_empty());

From a given node one can create multiple sub-stacks:

use cactus::Cactus;
let c = Cactus::new().child(1);
let c2 = c.child(2);
let c3 = c.child(3);
assert!(c2 != c3);
assert_eq!(c2.vals().cloned().collect::<Vec<_>>(), [2, 1]);
assert_eq!(c3.vals().cloned().collect::<Vec<_>>(), [3, 1]);

Structs

Cactus	An immutable cactus stack node. May be empty or contain a value; may have a pointer to a parent or not.
CactusNodesIter	An iterator over a Cactus stack's nodes. Note that the iterator produces nodes starting from this node and then walking up towards the root.
CactusValsIter	An iterator over a Cactus stack's values. Note that the iterator produces values starting from this node and then walking up towards the root.