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9.2.3 Containers
Two common container data structures can be represented directly with
tree nodes. A TREE_LIST is a singly linked list containing two
trees per node. These are the TREE_PURPOSE and TREE_VALUE
of each node. (Often, the TREE_PURPOSE contains some kind of
tag, or additional information, while the TREE_VALUE contains the
majority of the payload. In other cases, the TREE_PURPOSE is
simply NULL_TREE, while in still others both the
TREE_PURPOSE and TREE_VALUE are of equal stature.) Given
one TREE_LIST node, the next node is found by following the
TREE_CHAIN. If the TREE_CHAIN is NULL_TREE, then
you have reached the end of the list.
A TREE_VEC is a simple vector. The TREE_VEC_LENGTH is an
integer (not a tree) giving the number of nodes in the vector. The
nodes themselves are accessed using the TREE_VEC_ELT macro, which
takes two arguments. The first is the TREE_VEC in question; the
second is an integer indicating which element in the vector is desired.
The elements are indexed from zero.