Talformat

Talformat is a fictional data-interchange format designed for representing tabular data along with lightweight metadata. It is used in educational materials and programming exercises to illustrate simple data serialization concepts and to compare with established formats like CSV and JSON. The design emphasizes human readability, minimal syntax, and easy parsing across programming languages.

Structure and syntax: A talformat document typically consists of two sections: an optional metadata section and a data section. Metadata lines begin with META: and contain key=value pairs separated by semicolons. The data section contains a header row listing column names, followed by zero or more data rows. Rows are separated by line breaks, and values may be quoted to include delimiters. Values are interpreted as numbers, booleans, or strings, with a simple rule set for type inference; a separate type hint line may be used to annotate columns, though this is not mandatory.

Usage and tooling: In practice, talformat is described in tutorials and lightweight exercises rather than formal specifications. Because it is a fictional construct, there are no official specifications or reference implementations; variations exist in examples and learner-led projects. Its simplicity makes it convenient for demonstrating basic parsing, error handling, and data exchange concepts.

Relation to other formats: Talformat borrows from concepts in CSV for tabular data, JSON for metadata, and YAML for readability. It aims to provide a middle ground between minimal plain-text tables and more structured data formats, highlighting trade-offs between human readability and machine parse-ability.

See also: CSV, TSV, JSON, YAML, data serialization formats.