Archived. Successor is axp.

atto is an untyped and simple document/configuration language with atoms, lists and documents.

An atom is a bare word, a string or a guarded string.

bare-words: ( name true 42 null )
string: "Hello, world!"
guarded-string: #"He said: "Hello!" and I nodded."#

A list consists of values enclosed by parentheses. A list can be empty.

list: ( example ( example ) ( key: example) )
empty-list: ()

A document consist of one or more entries enclosed by parentheses¹. An entry has an atom key and a value.

name: "John Doe"
age: 42

_{¹except for the root document: can be empty and has no parentheses}

Document := ( Atom ":" Value )+
Value    := Atom | "(" List | Document ")"
List     := Value*

Data in software always has type. Sometimes the type is implicit or an union, but the type does exist. One example: JSON does not support the Date type. This is not a problem: people just use ISO 8601. This looks like this: "date": "2023-10-14T15:06:05Z". And why is this not misinterpreted as a string? Because the software knows that the data target is of type Date.

This let me to the conclusion that a type system is mostly unneccessary. And atto was born.

TypeScript POC in development with @web/test-runner without bundling, sources in subdirectory ts. Currently not everything implemented, especially guarded strings. Tests but without coverage.

Thanks to KillyMXI for inspiring me with his TypeScript lexer leac. With his permission I copied his line-column query virtually unchanged (positionQuery.ts).

Rust POC in development, sources in subdirectory rust. A lot is missing yet.

name: atto
type: module
version: 0.1.1
description: "atto - a simple document language"
license: ISC
devDependencies: (
  @esm-bundle/chai: ^4.3.4-fix.0
  @web/dev-server: 0
  @web/dev-server-esbuild: ^0.4.1
  @web/test-runner: ^0.16.1
  typescript: 5
  @web/test-runner-playwright: ^0.10.1
)
author: "see AUTHORS"
dependencies: ()

# Copyright see AUTHORS & LICENSE; SPDX-License-Identifier: ISC+

squadName: "Super hero squad"
homeTown: "Metro City"
members: (
  ( name: Sandman age: 53 powers: (Sandstorm "Magic carpet") )
  ( name: "Molecule Man" age: 29
    powers: ("Radiation resistance" "Turning tiny" "Radiation blast")
  )
  ( name: "Madame Very Large Uppercut"
    age: 39
    powers: ("Million tonne punch" "Damage resistance" "Superhuman reflexes")
  )
)

_{Copyright see AUTHORS & LICENSE; SPDX-License-Identifier: ISC+}