http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=998829


in reply to Challenge: Dumping trees.

I'm not sure, but maybe such a structure is easier to create:

┼┬┬┬┬┬a
│││││└b
││││└c
│││└┬d
│││ └e
││├┬┬┬f
│││││└g
││││└h
│││└┬┬i
│││ │└j
....

My inspiration is https://github.com/perl6/std/blob/master/viv#L187 which produces parse trees like

└─VAST::statementlist, BEG: 0, END: 7
  ├─VAST::statement, BEG: 0, END: 7
  │ └─VAST::term__S_identifier, BEG: 0, END: 7, SYM: identifier, _from: 7,
  │   │   _pos: 7, _specific: 1, dba: term, prec: z=
  │   ├─VAST::identifier, BEG: 0, END: 3, TEXT: say
  │   └─VAST::args, BEG: 3, END: 7, invocant: undef
  │     └─VAST::arglist, BEG: 4, END: 7, WS: 1
  │       └─VAST::term__S_value, BEG: 4, END: 6, SYM: value, WS: 1,
  │         │   _specific: 1
  │         └─VAST::value__S_number, BEG: 4, END: 6, SYM: number, WS: 1,
  │           │   _specific: 1
  │           └─VAST::number, BEG: 4, END: 6, WS: 1
  │             └─VAST::integer, BEG: 4, END: 6, WS: 1
  │               └─VAST::decint, BEG: 4, END: 6, TEXT: 42, WS: 1
  └─VAST::eat_terminator, BEG: 7, END: 7, TEXT: , WS: 1

Update: just today a Perl 6 solution for Visualize a tree on rosettacode was entered, it produces similar output:

root
├─a
│ └─a1
│   └─a11
└─b
  ├─b1
  │ └─b11
  ├─b2
  └─b3

Shouldn't be to hard to port to Perl 5.