axal

'axal' is the type of a hierarchical namespace.

in english

axal is an acyclic tree where the nodes...

• may or may not have data

• may or may not have sub-nodes

• the connections between nodes have names

another way to think of axal is:
a map of key-value pairs where the keys are all paths.

it is similar to a “file tree”.

in image

in hoon

++  axal
  |$  [item]
  [fil=(unit item) dir=(map @tas $)]

in hawk, the axal shape is used a few times:

• it is the backbone of the entire namespace

• it is the shape of the metadata associated with each node