plain([tree])

Converts an asynchronous async tree into a synchronous plain JavaScript object or array. A common use for Tree.plain is to convert a tree into a form that you can pass to a JavaScript function expecting a plain JavaScript object or array.

• The supplied argument can be any treelike object such as a JSON/YAML file, file system folder, etc. If omitted, plain converts the current tree — in the command line, this will be the current folder — to a plain JavaScript object.
• The result’s keys will be the tree’s keys cast to strings. Any trailing slashes in keys will be removed.
• Any tree value that is itself a tree will be recursively converted to a plain object or array.

Array-like trees #

An array-like tree is one whose keys are all integers and fill the range 0..length-1. If you pass an array-like tree to Tree.plain, the result will be a JavaScript array, even if the tree was originally defined as an object.

$ ori "{ 0: 'a', 1: 'b', 2: 'c' }"
- a
- b
- c

The order of the keys will determine the order of the values in the array – but the numeric value of the keys will be ignored.

This is done because functions like Tree.reverse and Tree.sort manipulate the order of keys but don’t change the numeric values of those keys:

$ ori Tree.keys "{ 0: 'a', 1: 'b', 2: 'c' }"
- "0"
- "1"
- "2"
$ ori Tree.keys Tree.reverse "{ 0: 'a', 1: 'b', 2: 'c' }"
- "2"
- "1"
- "0"

Because this tree is array-like, Tree.plain will convert it to an array. The array values will follow the tree order, ignoring the specific numeric value of the keys.

$ ori Tree.plain Tree.reverse "{ 0: 'a', 1: 'b', 2: 'c' }"
- c
- b
- a

When the Origami CLI displays the result of an expression, it uses Tree.plain to convert the result to a plain object/array, so the use of Tree.plain in the CLI is generally unnecessary:

$ ori Tree.reverse "{ 0: 'a', 1: 'b', 2: 'c' }"
- c
- b
- a