4. Lists, records, and pipe-tables

The composite shapes: ordered lists, named-field records, and compact row tables.

Before you start: Primitive types and literals

A list is square brackets over any element type: tags = ["alpha", "beta"]. A record is named fields in braces — and when the declared type is known, a bare record literal ({ name: "Ops team", contact: "..." }) coerces to it, so you rarely spell the type name at the value site.

When many values share one shape, pipe-table syntax keeps them readable: declare the row type with @table("kind"), give a block a @children("kind") field, then write the field as name: followed by | cell | cell | rows — each row becomes one record.

§ 1Exercise: A catalogue with all three

Author a document holding a list, a record, and a pipe-table of users, then read the list back.

type Owner { name: utf8  contact: utf8 }

@table("user")
type User {
  name:    utf8
  age:     u32
  enabled: bool
}

@block("db")
type Db {
  @inline(0) id: identifier
  @children("user") users: list<User>
}

@document
type Doc {
  tags:  list<utf8>
  owner: Owner
  @child("db") db: Db
}

tags  = ["alpha", "beta", "gamma"]
owner = { name: "Ops team", contact: "ops@example.com" }

db production {
  users:
    | "alice" | 30 | true  |
    | "bob"   | 25 | false |
    | "cara"  | 42 | true  |
}