Gon tries to combine the best of YAML, JSON and XML by providing readability, performance and flexibility.

Gon provides in its syntax a way of defining a name, class and attributes and flags for each object or node. Yet, all of them are optional, to be easily migratable from any other configuration.

Names must not contain any special characters. Characters must be either a letter or a digit.

Simple values are numbers, booleans and strings. They have to be declared the following way:

• Numbers: Can be written as a decimal number or as hex code. As soon as a . is found it is classified as a float number. Otherwise, it is classified as an integer
• Booleans: Might be true or false
• Strings: String are declared by surrounding them with ". E.g. "This is a String". To escape any character, put a \ in front of it.

name[class] attribute="value" -flag

Explanation:
name: The name or key (name)
class: the class. Comparable to the tag in XML. Same restrictions as in name.
attribute: The key/identifier of an attribute (name)
"value": The value of an attribute (simple value)
flag: the name of the flag. Put a ! to negate it (handled as boolean attribute)

A node can have one of the three value declarations:

• No value:

  name[NoValue];
  

• Simple value

  name[SimpleValue]: "This is a simple value";
  

• Nested nodes

  name[NestedNodes] {
    anotherNode[NoValue];
    simple[SimpleValue]: 0x0F0F0F;
  }