An Elm package for working with [Canonical S-expressions][1] Note: if you're viewing this README on GitHub, be aware that this is a mirror of our [GitLab repo][2]; please open issues and pull requests there. # Introduction Canonical S-expressions allow you to encode and decode structured data, like JSON, but unlike JSON, there is only one possible ("canonical") encoding for a given value. This means that two encodings are equal if and only if the values are equal. This makes it possible to use them as dictionary keys, both with Elm's `Dict` type and other applications where values are compared by looking at the raw bytes (including many cryptographic applications, which is what they were designed for). Canonical S-expressions are simpler than JSON; they only have two types: * lists * "atoms" Atoms are just flat bytes, while lists are lists of other s-expressions. Note that while according to the standard, canonical s-expressions can encode binary data, this package does not support that -- atoms must be strings. The reason for this is that elm's `Bytes` type cannot be used as a `Dict` key, so encoding to `Bytes` would defeat the point of the package. See the Wikipedia article linked above for more general information about canonical s-expressions. # License Copyright (C) 2019 CommonMind LLC This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Affero General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License along with this program. If not, see . [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_S-expressions [2]: https://gitlab.com/commonmind/elm-csexpr