TAML Documentation

Basic Syntax

TAML uses only two structural characters:

• Tab character (\t) - for hierarchy and key-value separation
• Newline (\n) - for separating entries

That's it. No brackets, braces, colons, quotes, or hyphens needed.

Key-Value Pairs

The simplest TAML structure is a key-value pair, separated by one or more tabs:

key		value
name	John Doe
age		30
city	San Francisco

Keys and values are separated by at least one tab. You can use multiple tabs for alignment.

Nested Structures

Create hierarchical structures by indenting with tabs. Each level of indentation represents one level deeper in the hierarchy:

server
	host	localhost
	port	8080
	settings
		timeout		30
		retries		3

database
	type	postgresql
	connection
		host	db.example.com
		port	5432

A key without a value on the same line becomes a parent object, and its children are the indented lines that follow.

Lists

Lists are represented by values at the same indentation level without keys:

features
	authentication
	logging
	caching
	monitoring

This creates an array: ["authentication", "logging", "caching", "monitoring"]

Lists of Objects

You can also have lists of nested structures:

users
	name	Alice
	role	admin
	
	name	Bob
	role	user

Special Values

Null Values

Null values are represented by a tilde ~ character as the only content in the value position:

optional	~

Empty Strings

Empty strings require quotes (the only time quotes are needed):

emptyField	""

Flexible Alignment

Use multiple tabs between keys and values to create visually aligned columns:

name		John Doe
email		john@example.com
age			30
city		San Francisco
country		USA

This improves readability without affecting the data structure.

Comments

Comments start with # and continue to the end of the line:

# This is a comment
server
	host	localhost	# default host
	port	8080		# default port

Full Specification

For complete technical details including:

• Formal grammar definitions
• Character encoding requirements
• Validation rules
• Conformance criteria
• Error handling
• Parser implementation guidelines

Please refer to the TAML Specification document in our GitHub repository.

Complete Examples

Configuration File Example

application		MyApp
version			1.0.0
author			Developer Name

server
	host	0.0.0.0
	port	8080
	ssl		true
	workers	4

database
	type	postgresql
	connection
		host		db.example.com
		port		5432
		database	myapp_db
		username	dbuser
		pool
			min	2
			max	10

logging
	level	info
	outputs
		console
		file

features
	user-authentication
	api-gateway
	rate-limiting
	monitoring