Re: Preliminary robot.faq (Please Send Questions or Comments)
YUWONO BUDI (yuwono@uxmail.ust.hk)
Thu, 9 Nov 1995 00:37:33 +0800 (HKT)
>
> >>1.1) What is a ROBOT?
> >>
> >> A Robot is a program that traverses the World Wide Web, gathering some
> >>sort of information from each site it visits. This journey is accomplished
> >>by visiting a web page and then recursively visiting all or some of it's
> >>linked pages.
> >
> >True but misleading; there are much better strategies for covering
> >the web than this kind of direct recursion.
> >
> >
> >Cheers, Tim Bray, Open Text Corporation (tbray@opentext.com)
>
>
> 1.1) What is a ROBOT?
>
> A Robot is a program that traverses the World Wide Web, gathering some
> sort of information from each site it visits. This journey is accomplished
> by visiting a web page and then visiting some or all of its linked pages.
> The method one follows whether it's recursive or some sort of fuzzy logic
> determines the effectivness of the search.
I am not sure understand what the original comment is getting at.
But it seems to me that the word "recursive" is somewhat overloaded.
To those with CS background, a "recursive" visit implies a "depth first"
tree traversal. Most robot implementations that I'm aware of use
"breadth first" traversals. Among the reasons is that you would want
to be able to limit the depth your robot digs into. Whether
depth limitation is more useful than breadth limitation is another
issue, IMHO. One thing for sure, stopping the robot after it
reaches a certain depth is much simpler than deciding which links
to follow/ignore.
I don't know what would be the more general term in place of
"recursively," "sequentially" perhaps?
-Budi.