: VS = for assignments

[Keats]

owner = {
  name = "Vincent Prouillet",
  bio = "Someone",
  dob = 1979-05-27, # first-class date type
}

vs

owner: {
  name: "Vincent Prouillet",
  bio: "Someone",
  dob: 1979-05-27, # first-class date type
}

First one is more similar to TOML while second one to JSON

[naturallymitchell]

spurring some feedback to this essential crate with a joke from @meh 's website (intentional ping)...

[meh]

Now I'm going to blow your mind, but, why not neither instead?

owner {
  name "Vincent Prouillet",
  bio "Someone",
  dob 1979-05-27, # first-class date type
}

[naturallymitchell]

Ok... so @meh.. I need to ask. how serious are you?
I invited you hear as a jokester, and you brought it..
but I also invited you here for deep, pragmatic insights, and you brought it on that front too.. (in one comment)
now seriously, Keats and others need you on this one... would this work well?

@Others.... assignments with just a space..??

[meh]

Well, if it were up to me I'd remove commas as well!

But it depends how you look at the configuration, assignment implies mutability or binding, while you probably want your configuration to be declarative instead.

Then you have dictionaries which don't really have any assignment or mutability involved, you're just declaring key and value pairs and they're also different from top-level definitions (but not really, because everything is a dictionary, including the top-level).

Then you have include which makes the top-level dictionary a special case (and actually mutable!) by allowing the top-level dictionary of another configuration file to be merged into the one including it, without allowing merging sub-dictionaries which prevents useful partial updates.

All in all I'd give more thought about what wants to be achieved, personally I've always found EDN to be the best configuration format if there is a choice and no consensus in the ecosystem.

[zhangkaizhao]

The include is a special directive and should be distinguished from normal key-value pairs.
So I think

owner {
  name "Vincent Prouillet",
  bio "Someone",
  dob 1979-05-27, # first-class date type
}

is a bad idea until there is a good substitute for the current include (maybe include!?).

[blfpd]

I like the column sign better. Maybe because of the dictionaries in Python.
But also because one of the first things you learn in programming is the equal sign does not mean equal. Maybe non programmers don’t need to unlearn that.

[Keats]

I'm not a big fan of not having an assignment operator, I kind of like just using : looking at it again.