CCL Syntax

CCL uses key-value pairs with indentation for nesting. That’s the entire format. All keys and values are strings. Because everything is a string, you don’t need to worry about escaping “special” characters, surrounding “real strings” in quotes, etc. You’ll get a string value matching exactly what you wrote in the config.

Core Syntax Rules

1. Key-Value Pairs

key = value
another = some text value

• Split on first =
• Key is trimmed of leading and trailing whitespace
• Value is trimmed of leading whitespace only (trailing whitespace is preserved)

2. Empty Keys (Lists)

servers =
  = web1.example.com
  = web2.example.com
  = api.example.com

Empty key (= value) creates list items.

3. Comments

/= This is a comment
key = value  /= Not a comment, value is "value  /= Not a comment"

Comments use /= syntax. Only at line start.

Tip

This comment format is a convention, and is changeable. Comments are entries with / as the key - your application can filter or interpret them differently if needed.

4. Indentation for Nesting

parent =
  child = nested value
  another = also nested

Lines indented more than previous = part of that value.

5. Recursive Parsing

beta =
  mode = sandbox
  capacity = 2

The value mode = sandbox\ncapacity = 2 is recursively parsed as CCL.

Edge Cases

Malformed Input: Missing = treats entire line as key with empty value.

Unicode: UTF-8 supported. Keys and values can contain any Unicode characters.

CRLF vs LF: Line endings normalized to LF (\n) before parsing.

Whitespace-only values: Preserved if present after =.

key =
# Value is "    " (4 spaces)