Recommendation to encode (lists of) flat key-value pairs

[nichtich]

Not having internalized the data model of KDL yet, I struggled to see how to encode a flat set of key-value pairs. Given this example in INI File syntax:

answer=42
author="Douglas Adams"
work="The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

The KDL approach could be either

answer 42
author "Douglas Adams"
work "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

or

- answer=42 author="Douglas Adams" work="The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

The latter looks more familiar for readers of other data structuring languages but it is more difficult to edit (linebreak) and requires a root node identifier (here: -).

There should be a recommendation that also includes lists of flat key-value pairs (e.g. rows from a SQL database or from a CSV file with header), maybe KViK (key-values in KDL). How about recommending these to ways (also mixable):

- { 
  author "Douglas Adams"
  title "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
}
- { 
  author "Ursula K. Le Guin"
  title "A Wizard of Earthsea"
}

- author="Douglas Adams"  title="The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
- author="Ursula K. Le Guin"  title="A Wizard of Earthsea"

So each node must have node name - and either no arguments nor children block or a children block but no arguments nor parameters and nodes in the children block must have distinct names and exactly one argument.

Encoding INI Files is straightforward if you allow other node names in addition to - as section names and allow nodes with one argument for the global section.

name value # global section

section a=1 b=2

another-section {
  a 1
  b 2
}

- a=1 b=2  # can be read as row

I'm sure such a limited set of KDL, compatible with INI files and (rows of) key-value pairs would be useful.

Tabular data without header is more difficult but maybe not needed to be specified anyway. Maybe like this:

matrix rows=3 \
A1 B1 C1 \
A2 B2 C2 \
A3 B3 C3

[zkat]

answer 42
author "Douglas Adams"
work "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

This is definitely how I would encode it myself. Properties aren't meant for arbitrary amounts of metadata, but more for limited "metadata" for a node itself. So, a small list of flags, etc. If you want a lot of things, then children is usually the way to go for sure.