Comment by Aachen
I like it! The spec could be more accessibly written, but it's somewhat understandable in casual reading. Perhaps it would benefit from a diagram like json's famous one
One thing I didn't understand is this example on the homepage:
> password "${ENV:ANONPASS}"
The spec doesn't seem to mention any ${}. Is this for the program to manage rather than the parser of the config going out to fetch an env var? If so, I find this a bit out of scope to show; at least, it confused me about whether that's built-in/supported syntax or if it's just a literal with syntax intended for a different program
Depending on how set in stone this is, another complaint I might have is that you still have the trailing comma issue from JSON, except it's not a comma but a backslash (reverse solidus, as the spec calls it—my mobile keyboard didn't even know that word). Maybe starting a list of arguments with [ could allow one to use any number of lines for the values, until a ] is encountered?
Yes, the "${}" would be for the program to evaluate; referencing environment variables that way isn't uncommon in Unix configuration files.
"Reverse Solidus" is the Unicode name for the character [1], so if you don't like the name, blame Unicode :)
I hadn't thought of using '[' and ']' for multi-line directives, that's an interesting suggestion. It vaguely resembles arrays as they appear in various other languages. It fits with Confetti's design of, ultimately, being user interpreted.
[1] https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+005C