Allow for block types with optional labels about hcl HOT 5 OPEN

Hi @johakoch!

Looking in your fork, I see that you've implemented it only for the native syntax, in package hclsyntax.

For this to be merged upstream it would need to work in the JSON variant too, but that's not really possible because it makes the interpretation of the syntax ambiguous. That's why this isn't supported in HCL today.

If you only care about the native syntax and are willing to keep maintaining your fork then of course this is fine! But for this upstream HCL we expect language designers to use a different block type name for each block header signature, because that then gives the JSON syntax decoder a hook to understand which interpretation the author intended.

from hcl.

Hi @apparentlymart
Yes, we only support the HCL native syntax.

So we will keep a fork and try to maintain it as time allows.

Thanks anyway

from hcl.

Hi @apparentlymart
Could the optional label

api {
}

be a short form of an empty label

api "" {
}

, which could have a JSON representation of

{
  "api" {
    "": {
    }
  }
}

?

from hcl.