Language Specification

This page outlines the formal grammar rules, type system behavior, and syntax structure of the Krait Object Serialization Language (KOSL).

Formal EBNF Grammar

document       = { pair | empty_line | comment } ;
pair           = identifier , "=" , value ;

value          = implicit_array 
               | object 
               | explicit_array 
               | scalar ;

implicit_array = scalar_or_struct , { "," , scalar_or_struct }+ ;
explicit_array = "[" , [ value , { "," , value } , [","] ] , "]" ;
object         = "(" , [ pair , { "," , pair } , [","] ] , ")" ;

scalar_or_struct= object | explicit_array | scalar ;
scalar         = string | bareword | number | boolean | "null" ;

identifier     = bareword ;
bareword       = ( ALPHA | DIGIT | "_" | "-" | "." )+ ;
string         = '"' , { ANY_CHAR - '"' } , '"' ;
comment        = ( "#" | "//" ) , { ANY_CHAR - NEWLINE } ;

Supported Types

KOSL recognizes the following raw types:

Type	Syntax Example	Notes
String	"hello world" or hello_world	Quotes are required if spaces or special operators are present.
Integer	2026 or -42	Explicit 64-bit integer values.
Float	3.14	Must contain exactly one dot operator.
Boolean	true or false	Case-sensitive lowercase barewords.
Null	null	Evaluates to an empty/null value.
Array	[1, 2, 3]	Sequence wrapped in brackets.
Object	(key=val, foo=bar)	Key-value mapping wrapped in parentheses.

Specialized Evaluation Behaviors

Implicit Arrays

Commas residing on the top parsing level (or within an object/array context) split unmapped values into implicit arrays.

# This parses to: Array [ String("windows10"), String("ubuntu16"), String("macOS10") ]
supported=windows10,ubuntu16.5,macOS10

However, commas inside double-quoted strings do not create arrays:

# Parses strictly to: String("hello, world")
message="hello, world"

Fallback Type Inference

Barewords are strings that do not contain quotes. To ensure common configuration standards do not crash parsers, semantic versions containing multiple decimal points fall back gracefully to Strings:

• 0.1.0 -> Parsed as a String (cannot be validated as a float due to multiple decimals).
• 12 -> Parsed as an Integer.
• 12.5 -> Parsed as a Float.