A new version of our RcppTOML package just arrived on CRAN. It wraps an updated version of the cpptoml parser which, after a correction or two, now brings support for TOML v0.5.0 – which is still rather rare.

RcppTOML brings TOML to R. TOML is a file format that is most suitable for configurations, as it is meant to be edited by humans but read by computers. It emphasizes strong readability for humans while at the same time supporting strong typing as well as immediate and clear error reports. On small typos you get parse errors, rather than silently corrupted garbage. Much preferable to any and all of XML, JSON or YAML – though sadly these may be too ubiquitous now. TOML has been making inroads with projects such as the Hugo static blog compiler, or the Cargo system of Crates (aka “packages”) for the Rust language.

Besides the (exciting !!) support for TOML v0.5.0 and e.g. its dates support, this release also includes a (still somewhat experimental) feature cooked up by Dan Dillon a while back: TOML files can now include other TOML (and in fact, Dan implemented a whole recursing stream processor…). The full list of changes is below.

Changes in version 0.1.4 (2018-10-23)

• Spelling / grammar fixes to README (Jon Calder in #18)

• Cast from StretchyList to List ensures lists appear as List objects in R

• Support optional includize pre-processor for recursive includes by Dan Dillon as a header-only library (#21 and #22)

• Support includize argument in R and C++ parser interface

• Added a few more #nocov tags for coverage (#23)

• Synchronized with new upstream cpptoml version supporting the TOMP v0.5.0 specification (#25)

Courtesy of CRANberries, there is a diffstat report for this release.

More information is on the RcppTOML page page. Issues and bugreports should go to the GitHub issue tracker.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.