[Biojava-l] Newick/Nexus processing of non-binary trees

[Thasso Griebel]

Hi,

> 1. A weighted version is enough. If branch lengths are not specified,
> then weights could be set to 0. There there would not be a decrease in
> functionality.

just my two cents, but I would go with a default weight of 1.0. If you  
read something unweighted you would ignore the edge weights anyways,  
but, for example, if you write something simple that computes path  
lengths, a default weight of 1.0 ensures that the method also works  
for "unweighted" trees, where the length of a path is defined as the  
number of edges you need to traverse to move from say A to B. I think  
the argument also hold for other algorithms used on trees and graphs.

anyways, just my two cent.

-thasso

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Dipl. Inf. Thasso Griebel-------------------Lehrstuhl fuer Bioinformatik
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