Getting a reference to an enclosing list/block in Rebol

Question

There is no "parent" reference for a block! series, as it can be referenced from multiple other block! series, so the concept of "parent" is meaningless in such cases.

However, you can manually add a back-reference in your block when you need it (just watch out when PROBE-ing or MOLD-ing the "child" block then, it will result in dereferencing pointed blocks leading to a much more verbose result than you want).

Tip: I sometimes do add back-references for block values using an "hidden" header (just moving the block offset passed the values you want to hide). It's PROBE-resistant and handy, but can't be serialized (e.g. on disk) without having to write your own specific serialization routine to handle those back-references appropriately (means usually replacing them with a non-series value: integer, word, issue, tag...whatever allows you to rebuild that link once loaded back).

For example:

>> x: [1 2 3]
== [1 2 3]
>> y: [a b c]
== [a b c]
>> insert/only x y            ; insert a reference to y in x
== [1 2 3]
>> x
== [[a b c] 1 2 3]            ; y reference is at first position
>> x: next x                  ; let's hide it now
== [1 2 3]
>> x
== [1 2 3]
>> x/-1                       ; here is how to retrieve our "hidden" header
== [a b c]

Please note that /-1 shortcut is currently not working in R3 as in R2.

So, for your own code example above, you need to make a function that will dive into your initial block structure and insert those hidden back-references, so you can access them easily when needed. Here is an example code for processing your structure:

insert-back-ref: func [blk [block!] parent [block! none!]][
    if parent [                     ;-- no processing if root call
        insert/only blk next head parent ;-- insert the back-reference in child
        parent/1: blk: next blk     ;-- reset the parent reference to child to
    ]                               ;-- point after the back-ref (and hide it)
    forall blk [
        if block? blk/1 [              ;-- if a child block is found
            insert-back-ref blk/1 blk  ;-- process its content recursively              
        ]
    ]
]

insert-back-ref fs none            ;-- pass none as root parent

?? fs
l: fs/usr/local
?? l
p: l/-1
?? p
p: p/-1
?? p

This will output:

fs: [
    usr [
        local [
            bin []
        ]
        share []
    ]
    bin []
]
l: [
    bin []
]
p: [
    local [
        bin []
    ]
    share []
]
p: [[
        local [
            bin []
        ]
        share []
    ]
    bin []
]

Actually, we have created a graph structure using nested block references that can be navigated very simply using built-in series actions and paths.