mlike

Mlike is a lightweight programming language and data description format designed for configuration, data exchange, and lightweight scripting. It aims for readability, a small footprint, and easy embedding in host applications. The name Mlike is derived from a desire for machine-friendly syntax that remains human readable.

History and development: The language emerged in open-source discussions starting around 2018, with a reference implementation released in 2020. Community-contributed parsers and bindings followed for Python, Rust, and JavaScript, though adoption remains variable across ecosystems.

Design goals and features: Mlike uses an indentation-based syntax with a minimal core and strong interoperability. It offers primitive types such as int, float, string, and bool, and compound types like lists and maps. Optional and union types are supported, along with type aliases and basic pattern matching for destructuring. The standard library is intentionally small, focusing on common string and I/O utilities. Tooling includes a reference compiler, a formatter, and linting rules to promote consistency across projects.

Usage: The language targets configuration files, simple scripting tasks, and data interchange between services. Files typically use the .mlike extension and can be compiled to an intermediate representation or bound directly to a host language for embedding in applications.

Example: A concise snippet describing a person

name: "Alex"

age: 29

emails:

- "[email protected]"

- "[email protected]"

Implementations and ecosystem: The core project maintains the reference compiler, with independent runtimes and bindings available in various languages to facilitate integration into larger software stacks.

See also: configuration languages, data serialization formats, indentation-based languages.