Dictionarystring

Dictionarystring is a term used in software design to describe a textual representation of a mapping from keys to values. It encodes a dictionary or map as a single string, enabling storage, transmission, or interoperability with systems that operate on text. Unlike an in-memory dictionary, a dictionarystring must be parsed to recover the original key-value structure.

Common forms include JSON, YAML, TOML, and INI-like formats, as well as custom delimited sequences such as name=value pairs separated by semicolons. Parsing converts the string back into a dictionary or map in the target language, with attention to escaping, separators, and data types. For example, a dictionarystring might be {"name":"Alice","age":30} in JSON or name=Alice;age=30 in a simple delimited form.

Dictionarystrings are widely used for configuration files, web APIs, and data interchange between heterogeneous systems because they are human readable and language-agnostic. Advantages include portability and ease of debugging; limitations include parsing overhead, the potential loss of some type information, and the need to escape special characters.

When designing a dictionarystring format, developers consider readability, compactness, and safety. JSON is a common default due to broad support, while custom formats may be chosen for compactness or domain-specific requirements. Proper validation and escaping are important when accepting dictionarystrings from untrusted sources.

See also: dictionary, map, JSON, YAML, TOML, serialization, key-value store, INI.