[r-t] Complexity of extents

[Mark Davies]

Philip Earis asks,

> Are there appropriate standard tests / algorithms
 > that can be used in such a scenario, ie here to
 > rank extents in terms of their intrinsic complexity?

Find a way of writing out the extents in a standard way (perhaps the 
expanded place notation), and compress them using a tool like gzip.

The size of the compressed extent is a metric of its complexity: 
simpler, more repetitive extents will be smaller.

MBD