summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
blob: d1ffe636c86754d9b07703fa16171e3317963ef2 (plain)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE pkgmetadata SYSTEM "http://www.gentoo.org/dtd/metadata.dtd">

<pkgmetadata>
<herd>java</herd>

<longdescription>
ATerm (short for Annotated Term) is an abstract data type designed for the
exchange of tree-like data structures between distributed applications. 

The ATerm library forms a comprehensive procedural interface which enables
creation and manipulation of ATerms in C and Java. The ATerm implementation is
based on maximal subterm sharing and automatic garbage collection. 

A binary exchange format for the concise representation of ATerms (sharing
preserved) allows the fast exchange of ATerms between applications. In a typical
application---parse trees which contain considerable redundant
information---less than 2 bytes are needed to represent a node in memory, and
less than 2 bits are needed to represent it in binary format. The implementation
of ATerms scales up to the manipulation of ATerms in the giga-byte range. 
</longdescription>
</pkgmetadata>