Vocabulary: path in a graph of objects?

Question

Hi. I'm having trouble with the following sentence:

DeepClone performs a deep clone of the target object, stopping the cloning process when all <dependency paths> have reached a value type or an ITransactionalObject.

What I mean by "dependency path" is the chain of references you follow in the cloning process: object A has a reference to B, B to C, C to D,... and N to an ITransactionalObject, and then you stop there and don't clone the ITransactionalObject. Then you go back to M and follow that path, and so on, until all branches run into value types or ITransactionalObjects.

What term would you use rather than dependency path? I have the feeling there must already be a name for it.

Thanks :)

Answer 1

Path is the standard term for a walk through a graph, so unless you want to add more domain-specific terminology I think that's okay.

You could say "... until the dependency tree is fully resolved (i.e. all paths have terminated in ITransactionalObjects or value types)".