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

• package
• language
• font
• menu

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:

.
    a  1
.
    b  2

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

is equivalent to

key
    a
b
    c
d   1
e   2

command line

module

noon = require 'noon'

# usage is similar to JSON 

noon.stringify { hello: 'world' }

# hello    world

noon.parse """
hello         world
what's up?    ☺
"""

# { hello: 'world', 'what\'s up?': '☺' }

stringify_options =   # stringify's second argument, defaults are: 
    ext:      'noon'  # output format: noon or json
    indent:   4       # number of spaces per indent level
    align:    true    # vertically align object values
    maxalign: 32      # maximal number of spaces when aligning
    sort:     false   # sort object keys alphabetically
    circular: false   # check for circular references (expensive!)
    colors:   false   # colorize output with ansi colors
    

# load data from file 

data = noon.load 'file.noon' 
data = noon.load 'file.json'

# write data to file

noon.save 'file.noon', data

noon.save 'file.noon', data, stringify_options
noon.save 'file.json', data  # < write as json
noon.save 'noext', data, ext: 'noon'

caveats

• keys can't start with the pipe symbol: |
• escaped keys can't contain the pipe symbol
• empty objects are not expressible

Don't use it if you can't live with the limitations mentioned above.