vigliteral

Vigliteral is a term used in discussions of data literals to denote a form of literal encoding that preserves exact content while remaining readable and safe for inclusion in source code and data files. It is not tied to a formal standard; rather it appears in speculative language design discussions and blog posts.

Design goals commonly described for vigliteral include reliable round-trip fidelity for arbitrary Unicode data, explicit delimitation to avoid language-specific escapes, and portability across programming environments. A vigliteral is imagined as a self-contained literal that encodes content without relying on the host language’s escape rules, using a dedicated start and end marker and a minimal escaping scheme only for the delimiter itself. The aim is to reduce ambiguity and make tooling easier to validate, transform, and verify.

Status and usage of vigliteral are largely theoretical. There is no widely adopted specification, and proposed implementations vary in syntax and tooling. Proponents argue that vigliteral can improve security by preventing injection when embedding data in code and can provide a clearer indication of intent compared with conventional string literals or interpolated strings. Critics note the lack of standardization, potential fragmentation across ecosystems, and the risk of confusion with existing literal forms.

An illustrative, but nonstandard, representation might place content between explicit markers, for example a form described in discussions as vigliteral[Content with newlines, quotes, and braces]. As of now, vigliteral remains a concept in design conversations rather than an established feature of programming languages.