| Human-edited config |
|---|
| Indent-based key-value pairs with lists and nesting | Config files, CI pipelines, and data serialization |
| Tables of key-value pairs with typed values | Application config in Rust and Python projects |
| Flat sections of key-value pairs | Simple app and system configuration |
| Flat KEY=value pairs, one per line | Environment variables and secrets |
| JSON with unquoted keys, comments, and trailing commas | Hand-edited config that stays close to JSON |
| JSON with line and block comments | Editor settings such as VS Code configuration |
| JSON with relaxed quotes, commas, and comments | Human-friendly config that converts to JSON |
| Typed value constraints combined by unification | Config schemas, validation, and Kubernetes templating |
| Nodes with arguments, children, and nesting | Config documents as a YAML alternative |
| Rust-style structs and enums with nesting | Rust app and game state via serde |
| Binary property trees of keys, lists, and values | macOS and iOS application settings |
| XML tags encoding property-list keys and values | Readable Apple property lists in Xcode projects |
| Machine interchange |
|---|
| Nested objects and arrays with typed values | APIs and config everywhere |
| Tags with attributes and deep nesting | Documents, SOAP, and legacy enterprise systems |
| Rows of comma-separated values under a header | Tabular data and spreadsheet exchange |
| Compact binary objects and arrays | Fast, small machine-to-machine payloads |
| One JSON object per line with no outer array | Streaming logs, event pipelines, and append-only exports |
| Columnar binary layout with encoding and statistics per column | Analytical queries over column subsets in data lakes |
| Schema-defined records in compact row encoding | Kafka pipelines and Hadoop data with evolving schemas |
| Compact tagged fields declared in a separate schema | gRPC services and cross-language message exchange |
| Binary JSON with added date, binary, and id types | MongoDB storage and wire protocol |
| Interface-defined structs with compact binary encoding | Cross-language RPC and serialization pipelines |
| Struct layout read directly without a decode step | Zero-copy parsing where latency matters |
| Flat tables of fields accessed by offset | Game and mobile data read in place without allocation |
| In-memory columnar arrays in a shared layout | Zero-copy tabular exchange between analytics libraries |
| Columnar stripes with compression and light indexes | Hive tables and warehouse-scale storage |
| Compact binary encoding of the JSON data model | Constrained devices and CoAP-based IoT traffic |
| Binary JSON with shared references for repeated keys | High-throughput Java services built on Jackson |
| Domain formats |
|---|
| JSON objects encoding points, lines, and polygons | Web maps and geographic feature APIs |
| JSON log of HTTP requests, responses, and timings | Browser network traces shared for debugging |
| XML feed items with title, date, and link | Publishing updates to feed readers |
| Plain text with punctuation markers for headings and emphasis | READMEs, docs, and static-site content |
| Zipped XHTML chapters with package and spine metadata | Reflowable e-book distribution |