Based on feedback and various discussions I've had, I've come up with an interesting proposal:
https://github.com/tjson/tjson-spec/issues/30 Instead of embedding type information in a string-by-string basis: {"s:foo": "s:bar"} We can use objects as the one source-of-truth for all type information, mandating an object as the only allowable root expression in the grammar, and embedding a type signature as a postfix tag in the name/key of each object member: {"foo:s": "bar"} In this scheme, objects act as a self-describing record-like product type. They describe the rest of the type information in what approaches a somewhat familiar type signature syntax. Previously the TJSON spec allowed arrays as a root expression as well, however this syntax prevents arrays from This means the only type allowed for member names is a string (which seems fine to me). It slightly complicates some other TJSON use cases, such as redaction. But otherwise I think it's an improvement. Moving the type signature to a postfix tag like this means we can add additional interpretations of arrays in a non-hacky way. Sets were proposed as another non-scalar type, but incorporating them before was a bit non hacky. Now we can define a syntax for non-scalar types, and to disambiguate them let's use upper case type names: - A: array - S: set Now we can specify a set of strings as something like a C++/Java-ish syntax: {"words:S<s>": ["foo", "bar", "baz"]} Or a multi-dimensional array of integers as: {"dialpad:A<A<i>>": [["1","2","3"], ["4","5","6"], ["7","8","9]]} Perhaps an array of objects? {"myobjects:A<O>": [{"foo:i":"1"},{"bar:i":"2"},{"baz:i":"3"}]} I think this is an improvement, and also enforces homogenous types, which would be more amenable to mapping to static type systems. -- Tony Arcieri
_______________________________________________ langsec-discuss mailing list langsec-discuss@mail.langsec.org https://mail.langsec.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/langsec-discuss
