ESOTERIC STANDARD COMMITTEE   
     Esoteric Container Format For Snippets (ECFFS)
     ESOSC-2018-D21


Introduction
------------

This documents describes the structure of a container format using ESN (see ESOSC-2018-x20) 
for code snippets containing esoteric code optionally together with their input (stdin), 
output (stdout), error (stderr) as well as language options to run the snippet correctly 
and optional runtime information and a link to the interpreter. 


Structure
---------

     [FIG]

     container := 
       STRUCT sid:esosc-ecffs-container {
         0x00, mandatory, "language name": STRING
         0x01, mandatory, "program": BINARY
         0x02, optional, "language options" : STRUCT sid:esosc-lang-options
         0x03, optional, "program input": BINARY
         0x04, optional, "program output": BINARY
         0x05, optional, "program error": BINARY
         0x06, optional, "run time information": STRUCT sid:esosc-runtime-info
         0x07, optional, "link": STRING
         0x08, optional, "program text encoding": STRING
       }

     [/FIG]


Field: language name
....................
 
The 'language name' field contains the name of the programming language. 

Field: program
..............

The 'program' field contains the actual code snippet. If the source code is textual in nature
the 'program text encoding' field should be populated with the name of an encoding such as one
of the following: ascii, utf-8, or latin1. This list of encodings is not exclusive. 

Field: program input
....................

Contains the data that must be fed to the program's standard input stream.

Field: program output
.....................

Contains the output of the program. This may be used to specify test cases. An entitiy executing
the program may verify that the output of the run matches the output specified in the 'program output'
field. 

Field: program error
....................

Contains the error of the program. This may be used to specify test cases. However, it should be noted
that different interpreters might report errors differently. An entity executing the program may verify
that the output on the error stream matches the output specified in the 'program error' field.

Field: run time information
...........................

Contains run time information of an example run of the program. The value of this field is merely informational.

Field: link
...........

Contains an URL that points to a website where one can download the tools necessary to run the program. The value
of this field is merely informational.

Field: program text encoding
............................

If the source code is plaintext this specifies the text encoding (utf-8 for example). 

Field: language options
.......................

See ESOSC-2018-x22.