SPECS.md

Simple Structured Binary Format Specification

Overview

The Simple Structured Binary Format is a simple, efficient, structured binary data format. It mimics JSON, with additional types and compression support.

Unit

All sizes and offsets are in basic machine units (bytes).

Endianness

All numbers are stored in little-endian format.

Header

Offset	Size	Description
0	4	Magic Number (default: 0x46425353)
4	1	Compression Mode
5		Root node (compressed with the corresponding compression mode)

The following compression modes are allowed:

Value	Mode
0x00	None
0x01	Gzip
0x02	Deflate

Nodes

Offset	Size	Description
0	1	Node type
1		Node data

The following node types are allowed:

Value	Type
0x00	Null
0x01	Object
0x02	Array
0x03	Boolean
0x04	SByte
0x05	Short
0x06	Integer
0x07	Long
0x08	Byte
0x09	UShort
0x0A	UInteger
0x0B	ULong
0x0C	HalfFloat
0x0D	Single
0x0E	Double
0x0F	String
0x10	ByteArray

Data Representation

Null

Offset	Size	Description
0	0	No data

Object

Offset	Size	Description
0	4	Number of key-value pairs

For each key-value pair:

Offset	Size	Description
0	4	UTF-8 encoded key name length
4	n	UTF-8 encoded key name
4 + n		Value (other nodes)

Array

Offset	Size	Description
0	4	Number of elements
4		Elements (other nodes)

Boolean

Offset	Size	Description
0	1	Value (1: true, 0: false)

SByte

Offset	Size	Description
0	1	Value

Short

Offset	Size	Description
0	2	Value

Integer

Offset	Size	Description
0	4	Value

Long

Offset	Size	Description
0	8	Value

Byte

Offset	Size	Description
0	1	Value

UShort

Offset	Size	Description
0	2	Value

UInteger

Offset	Size	Description
0	4	Value

ULong

Offset	Size	Description
0	8	Value

HalfFloat

Offset	Size	Description
0	2	Value

Single

Offset	Size	Description
0	4	Value

Double

Offset	Size	Description
0	8	Value

String

Offset	Size	Description
0	4	UTF-8 encoded string length
4		UTF-8 encoded string

ByteArray

Offset	Size	Description
0	4	Length
4		Data