# hcl [![GoDoc](http://img.shields.io/badge/go-documentation-blue.svg?style=flat-square)](http://godoc.org/github.com/fatih/hcl) [![Build Status](http://img.shields.io/travis/fatih/hcl.svg?style=flat-square)](https://travis-ci.org/fatih/hcl)

HCL is a lexer and parser family written in Go for
[HCL](https://github.com/hashicorp/hcl) (Hashicorp Configuration Language). It
has several components, similar to Go's own parser family. It provides a set of
packages to write tools and customize files written in HCL. For example both
[`hclfmt`](https://github.com/fatih/hclfmt) and `hcl2json` is written based on
these tools. 

## API

If you are already familiar with Go's own parser family it's really easy to
dive. It basically resembles the same logic. Howser there several differences
and the implemntation is completely different. Right now it contains the
following packages:

* `token`: defines constants reresenting the lexical tokens for a scanned HCL file.
* `scanner`: scanner is a lexical scanner. It scans a given HCL file and
  returns a stream of tokens.
* `ast`: declares the types used to repesent the syntax tree for parsed HCL files.
* `parser`:  parses a given HCL file and creates a AST representation
* `printer`: prints any given ast node and formats

## Why did you create it?

The whole parser familiy was created because I wanted a proper `hclfmt`
command, which like `gofmt` formats a HCL file. I didn't want to use the
package [github/hashicorp/hcl](https://github.com/hashicorp/hcl) in the first
place, because the lexer and parser is generated and it doesn't expose any kind
of flexibility. 

Another reason was that I wanted to learn and experience how to implement a
proper lexer and parser in Go. It was really fun and I think it was worht it.

## License

The BSD 3-Clause License - see
[`LICENSE`](https://github.com/fatih/hcl/blob/master/LICENSE) for more
details