Identifiers

Basic building blocks

DependoBuf emposes strict rules on the names of identifiers. The following productions are the basic building blocks of DependoBuf's syntax.

\[ \begin{align*} lc\_letter &::= \texttt{a} \mid \texttt{b} \mid \ldots \mid \texttt{z} \\ uc\_letter &::= \texttt{A} \mid \texttt{B} \mid \ldots \mid \texttt{Z}\\ digit &::= \texttt{0} \mid \texttt{1} \mid \ldots \mid \texttt{9}\\ ident\_char &::= lc\_letter \mid uc\_letter \mid digit \end{align*} \]

Identifier definitions

From these building blocks, we can construct identifiers:

\[ \begin{align*} lc\_identifier &::= lc\_letter \lbrace ident\_char \rbrace \\ uc\_identifier &::= uc\_letter \lbrace ident\_char \rbrace \\ type\_identifier &::= uc\_identifier constructor\_identifier &::= uc\_identifier var\_identifier &::= lc\_identifier \end{align*} \]

In DependoBuf identifiers are case sensitive. This means that foo and Foo are different identifiers. Moreover, the case of the identifier bears a semantic meaning.

Every lowercase identifier is a variable (like a type dependency, which can be understood as a parameter of the type; or a field of a constructed value).

Every uppercase identifier is a type (which are defined using message or enum keywords) or a constructor of a type (which are defined inside enum body by the user or implicitly by the compiler for message types).