vicoftw

got it done.. didn’t pay attention to the return value of get_the_category ??

final code… (anyway to clean it up?)
way too much of a mess

<?php	$args=array(
	'orderby' => 'name',
	'order' => 'ASC',);
	$categories=get_categories($args);
	foreach($categories as $category) {
	if ( $category->name != "article"){ if ( $category->category_parent == 0){
    echo '<li><a href="' . get_category_link( $category->term_id ) . '" class="title"  title="' . $category->name . '" >' . $category->name . '</a> <ul>';
	$cat_query = new WP_Query('cat='.$category->term_id );
	foreach($categories as $subcat){
	if ( $subcat->category_parent == $category->term_id ) {
	echo '<li><a href="' . get_category_link( $subcat->term_id ) . '" title="' . $subcat->name . '" >' . $subcat->name . '</a> </li>';
	}}
	while ($cat_query->have_posts()) : $cat_query->the_post();
	$flag=1;
	foreach (get_the_category( $post->ID ) as $cat ){
	if($cat->category_parent !=0){
	$flag=0;
	}}
	if ($flag == 1 ) {
	echo '<li><a href="' . get_permalink($post->ID) . '" title="' . the_title_attribute('echo=0') .'" >' . the_title('','',false) . '</a></li>';
	}
	endwhile; wp_reset_postdata();
	echo '</ul> </li>';
    }}}
?>

only 1 last thing I am getting stuck on.
which is removing the Sub category Posts.

while ($cat_query->have_posts()) : $cat_query->the_post();
	$flag=1;
	foreach (get_the_category( $post->ID ) as $cat ){
	if($category->name != $cat){
	$flag=0;
	}}
	if ($flag == 1 ) {
	echo '<li><a href="' . get_permalink($post->ID) . '" title="' . the_title_attribute('echo=0') .'" >' . the_title('','',false) . '</a></li>';
	}
	endwhile; wp_reset_postdata();

i know my code is like everywhere…
right now the flag is always changed to 0.
any suggestion on how to do this?

may i ask the flaws in using query_posts() in 2nd loop
compared to wp_query or get_posts?

thanks i will look into it