libxnm 0.1.1

libxnm project is a library for parsing and retrieving data from the XNM file format.
The prevailing meta-format used today for serialization is XML. XML was originally written as a markup language, and as such its original intent was to add additional information to free flowing text.
This is indeed what is needed in the context of text markup, e.g. for a web page or a word processor program. But using XML for general purpose object serialization generates very verbose serialization that are way larger than necessary.
Another shortcoming of XML is that there still is no support for binary objects. This again is partly based in its markup roots.
Main features:
- Recursively defined.
- Map to the scalar/table/hash structures of perl/python/ruby
- Not limited by preexisting language formats (JSON).
- Short, consise, visually appealing. Low signal to noise.
- No need to quote keys or one word values.
- Support binary data.
- Tables are enclosed by { } , arrays by [ ].
Examples of XNM
The following example shows a simple program configuration file:
fontsize: 16
fonts: { roman: Sans
italic: "Sans Italic"
bold: "Sans bold"
}
path: ["/usr/bin" "/bin" "/usr/local/bin"]
Here is another example copied from the wikipedia json page:
firstName: John
lastName: Smith
address: {
city: "New York, NY"
zipCode: 10021
streetAddress: "21 2nd Street"
}
phoneNumbers: [
"212 732-1234"
"646 123-4567"
]
The main (only) differences to JSON are:
Single words dont need quotes
Commas are not used between key/value pairs
Here is a third example translated from the gaim prefs file:
core => {
away => {
idle_reporting=>system
away_when_idle=>0
mins_before_way=>10
auto_reply=>awayidle
report_idle=>1
}
buddies => {}
contact => {
last_match => 0
offline_score => 2
away_score => 2
idle_score => 1
}
gaim => {
gtk=> {
browsers=> {
place=>F
command=>"xterm -e lynx %s"
browser=>firefox
new_window=>F
}
plugins => [
/usr/lib/gaim/gaimrc.so
/usr/lib/gaim/ssl-nss.so
/usr/lib/gaim/ssl.so
]
}
}
}
Note that the separater character used between keys and values is => combination like in perl.