Starting with a string representing a path to a node that I want to retrieve data from, such as "a.b.c". Currently, the code that I am using to transverse the node hierarchy to reach that node looks something like this (may not compile, but you get the idea):
string keyPath("a.b.c");
vector<string> keyPieces(split(keyPath, "."));
const YAML::Node *currNode = &rootNode;
for_each(begin(keyPieces), end(keyPieces), [&](const string &key)
{
// for simplicity, ignore indexing on a possible scalar node
// and using a string index on a sequence node
if ((*currNode)[key])
{
currNode = &((*currNode)[key]);
}
});
// assuming a valid path, currNode should be pointing at the node
// described in the path (i.e. currNode is pointing at the "c" node)
The above code seems to work correctly, but I am wondering if there is a better way to do the node transversal assignment. Using direct node assignment (currNode = currNode[key]), instead of a pointer/address of (currNode = &((*currNode)[key])), seems to end up creating references between nodes instead of transversing from one node to the next.
Is there a 'cleaner' or more idiomatic way to accomplish this?
There's no way to do that now (this is a use case I hadn't thought of), but it's a good idea. I've filed a bug (http://code.google.com/p/yaml-cpp/issues/detail?id=189).