Listide

Listide is a fictional data-structuring concept created for illustrative purposes in programming education and concept demonstrations. It is described as an indexable representation of hierarchical lists designed to blend the simplicity of linked lists with the reach of tree-like paths. The term is not tied to a single official specification and is commonly used in expository examples to discuss ideas around nested data and queryable structures.

Design and core ideas

Listide is imagined as a node-based structure where each element in a list may itself be a sublist. Nodes carry a value, an optional key, and pointers to a parent, a set of children, and a set of navigation links (such as next-sibling and skip pointers). A path- or coordinate-based addressing scheme allows fast access to nested elements by depth and position. Proponents describe listide as a compact hybrid that supports both flat and nested views, enabling operations that treat a sublist as a subdocument while preserving the ability to traverse siblings efficiently.

Common operations

In the fictional model, typical operations include insertion and deletion at a given path, retrieval by path or by range within a sublist, and traversal that can skip large portions of the structure when searching for specific criteria. The imagined complexity characteristics vary with the balancing of sublists and the use of skip pointers, but designed examples often cite logarithmic-like access for balanced scenarios and linear worst-case behavior in unbalanced cases.

Use cases and reception

Listide is primarily used in educational materials and speculative discussions about indexing nested data, such as configurations, JSON-like documents, or UI component trees. It is not a standard or widely implemented technology, and real-world alternatives include tree-based indexes, JSON path queries, and stack- or adjacency-list representations.

See also

Linked list, Adjacency list, Tree data structures, JSON path, Nested data indexing.