How it Started
We all know JSON, YAML, and TOML. They're popular configuration languages. They're great, don't get me wrong, but I wanted something different, something a bit more simple, readable, uniform, and most importantly, something aesthetically pleasing. I also had a lot of time to spend, as it was the end of the school year and all of my exams were over, so this was the perfect time to make my own configuration language, LQF, the Lightweight Quick Format,
The Design
I wanted LQF to be extremely simple and revolve around a singular symbol. The
symbol of choice is one of my favorite symbols, the > (greater than operator).
It represents an arrow to the right, and it's very readable.
The Basics
A configuration language needs to have sections and assignments
Sections
Sections begin with a > followed immediately by a section name.
Example:
> settingsAssignments
Assignments are key-value pairs within a section. You can assign using >>
Example:
username >> "smit4k"
active >> trueComments
Another feature that configuration languages have are comments. Comments
in LQF start with # and continue to the end of the line.
Example:
# This is a commentSupported Values
LQF supports a lot of values, when assigning a key to a value. Read the table below for more info:
| Type | Syntax Example | Description |
|---|---|---|
| String | "Hello, world!" | Double-quoted text |
| Number | 42, 3.14 | Integers, Floating points |
| Boolean | true, false | Logical values |
| Null | null | Null value |
| Array | [1, 2, 3], ["a", "b"] | Comma-separated list of values inside square brackets |
That's It
That's the entire language, as of now. It's essentially completed. It's simple, readable, and looks awesome (in my opinion). I'm really happy with how it turned out.
If you would like to contribute to the language, you can check out the specifications in my Github repo, smit4k/lqf-spec, all of the info about the language is there.
Here's a full example file for you to enjoy
# Example LQF file
# Designed by smit4k (smit@smit.codes)
> server
host >> "localhost"
port >> 8080
use_ssl >> true
> database
engine >> "postgres"
host >> "db.internal"
port >> 5432
username >> "admin"
password >> "s3cr3t"
max_connections >> 20
> features
enabled >> ["search", "analytics", "dark_mode"]
beta >> false
> logging
level >> "info"
file >> "logs/app.log"
> cache
backend >> "redis"
ttl_seconds >> 3600
enabled >> true
> meta
version >> "1.0.0"
maintainers >> ["bob@example.com", "gus@example.com"]