Package - noon

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noon

is an object notation with a focus on human readability.

Whitespace is preferred over other control characters:

Indentation is used to express hierarchy
Strings don't need to be escaped
- works well in config files
- works well in command line arguments
- good for storing regexp patterns

example files

format

hierarchy

is expressed by indentation with spaces

grandpa
    parent
        child
        sibling
    uncle

dictionaries

two or more spaces mark the end of a dictionary key, therefore ...
keys and list items can have single spaces in them but ...
unescaped dictionary keys can't contain consecutive spaces:

key 1    value 1
key 2    value 2 contains    spaces

one key makes an object

this is
an   object

the above as json: {"this is": null, "an": "object"}
while

this is
not an object

is equivalent to ["this is", "not an object"]

objects inside lists

are expressed like this:

the above as json: [{"a": 1}, {"b": 2}]

strings

escaping

if trimming your strings is not an option, you can escape:

a             |  leading spaces
b             trailing spaces  |
c             |  leading and trailing spaces  |
pipe symbol   |||
empty string  ||

keys must be escaped from both ends:

| s  pace |  key keeps spaces
|    |       key consists of spaces
||           key is empty string

multiline strings

key  ...
value is
a text with
line breaks
which stops
now
...

comments

# comments start with the hash sign
# mixing of data and comments is not allowed
therefore:
    1 # this is not a comment
    | # neither is this one
      # but this one is

inline

sometimes data needs to be encoded in a single line.

dense notation

key  . a .. b . c

is equivalent to

key
    a
        b
    c

one line notation

:: represents a line break
no spaces in keys allowed, therefore ...
no two-space-seperation necessary:

key . a :: b . c :: d 1 :: e 2