HOCON (Human-Optimized Config Object Notation)

published on 2024/01/09

The primary goal is: keep the semantics (tree structure; set of types; encoding/escaping) from JSON, but make it more convenient as a human-editable config file format.

The following features are desirable, to support human usage:

  • less noisy / less pedantic syntax
  • ability to refer to another part of the configuration (set a value to another value)
  • import/include another configuration file into the current file
  • a mapping to a flat properties list such as Java's system properties
  • ability to get values from environment variables
  • ability to write comments

HOCON

HOCON is supported in many languages and platform. The .NET package is here.