Analysis
Compare patterns
Evaluate design patterns side by side across intent, tradeoffs, languages, and integration fit.
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Analysis
Pattern comparison
Reviewing 3 patterns.
| Criteria | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Basics | |||
| Category | structural | behavioral | behavioral |
| Summary | Compose objects into tree structures to represent part-whole hierarchies and let clients work with individual and composite objects through the same interface. | — | — |
| Intent | Compose objects into tree structures to represent part-whole hierarchies and let clients work with individual and composite objects through the same interface. | Represent grammar rules as objects and interpret sentences by evaluating an abstract syntax tree or expression chain. | Provide a way to access elements of an aggregate sequentially while hiding the underlying representation. |
| Decision factors | |||
| Problem | A system needs to treat individual objects and groups of objects uniformly, but the hierarchy becomes difficult to manage with separate code paths. | You need to define a small language or expression grammar and evaluate it consistently across the application. | A collection needs to be traversed without exposing how it is stored internally. |
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| Integration notes | Composite is useful when a hierarchy of nested objects should expose a common interface, such as files and folders, menus and submenus, org charts, widget trees, or scene graphs. | Interpreter is useful for calculators, rule engines, simple DSLs, and command parsing systems where a structured grammar must be evaluated. | Iterator is useful for pagination, custom collections, ordered traversal, and any case where clients should not know the internal data structure. |