linked list thread GO

i'll start

It just occured to me that attempts to be clever/disruptive (like ">>0", etc.) would have no effect because threads are structured like this:


             +--++--+    +--++--+    +--++--+
post-list -> |  ||  +--->|  ||  |--->|  ||  |---> ...
             +--++--+    +--++--+    +--++--+
              |            |           |    
              |            |           |    
              V            V           V    
              Metadata and text of posts...

post-list is a pointer to the first post in a thread. The car of it points to the metadata and the actual text of the post, possibly using a table. The filling-in-the-template function obviously just pastes what it finds in the metadata and possibly linkyfies it. Thus, the text posted doesn't affect the thread. As you can see on the left, each post is properly enumerated starting from 1.

My point? The funny thing about this thread is that it is a proper list no matter what anyone posts. Posts like >>6 only see the text posted but ignore the post number. >>1 didn't have to explicitly link to >>2 because it's done automatically by the board software. My guess is that >>1 started this thread knowing full-well that people will post cyclic references and null pointers and is now laughing at all the naivity.