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Nested

A generic nested data structure textual format.

Data is formed by nested lists with associated key-value paired data. Each list can have any number of elements, either sublists or text values, and any number of key-value data. Particularly, a list containing only sequential data would be like regular lists or arrays and a list containing only key-value data would be like maps or dictionaries.

Format

  • Whitespace, commas , and semi-colons ; separates list nodes
  • Any non-whitespace sequence that don't fall in any of the following rules is a text value
  • Parenthesis (), brackets [] or braces {} delimit a child list
  • Starting single quotes ', double quotes " and backticks ` delimit a single text value that may contain otherwise special characters, like (), [], ,, : or ;. The quotation marks can be escaped by being doubled, so that the text 'one ''quoted'' phrase' content becomes one 'quoted' phrase, for example. Notice that quotation marks can appear normally in the middle of text values, like f' or double"quotes"
  • A mumber sign # starts a comment, so the rest of the line text is discarded. To use # as the first character in a text value, the text must be quoted
  • A colon : just after a text value marks a key-value data binding with the just parsed text value being the key and the following node being a value. To use : in a text value, the text must be quoted. Notice that keys are always text, but values can be either text or nested lists.

It's interesting to notice that valid JSON files are also valid Nested files, although Nested does not enforce the same semantics for non-textual values like numbers and null, nor text escape sequences.

Implementations

For now, there is an implementation in Lua. Lua tables are exactly a representation of data with both sequential and key-pair values.

Install it using LuaRocks:

$ luarocks install nested

Or just copy lua/nested.lua into your Lua path and require it, the module has no dependencies.

There is also a Command Line Interface script for reading and reformatting nested data in the file lua/main.lua. When installing with LuaRocks, the CLI script is installed as the nested command.

$ luarocks install nested-cli

Documentation

LDoc based documentation for the Lua module is available at github pages and can be generated with the following command:

$ ldoc lua/doc -d docs