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In simple terms, a property list contains strings, binary data, arrays of items, and dictionaries. These four kinds of items can be combined in various ways, as described below.
A string is enclosed in double quotation marks; for example, "This is a string." (The period is included in this string.) The quotation marks can be omitted if the string is composed strictly of alphanumeric characters and contains no white space (numbers are handled as strings in property lists). Though the property list format uses ASCII for strings, note that NEXTSTEP uses Unicode. You may see strings containing unreadable sequences of ASCII characters; these are used to represent Unicode characters. <<Details?>>
Binary data is enclosed in angle brackets and encoded in hexadecimal ASCII; for example, <0fbd777 1c2735ae>. Spaces are ignored.
An array is enclosed in parentheses, with the elements separated by commas; for example, ("San Francisco", "New York", "London"). The items don't all have to be of the same type (for example, all strings) -- but they normally should be. Arrays can contain strings, binary data, other arrays, or dictionaries.
A dictionary is enclosed in curly braces, and contains a list of keys with their values. Each key-value pair ends with a semicolon. Here's a sample dictionary: { user = maryg; "error string" = "core dump"; code = <fead0007>; }. (Note the omission of quotation marks for single-word alphanumeric strings.) Values don't all have to be the same type, since their types are usually defined by whatever program uses them (in this example, the program using the dictionary knows that user is a string and code is binary data). Dictionaries can contain strings, binary data, arrays, and other dictionaries.
Below is a sample of a more complex property list, taken from a user's defaults system (see defaults.1 The property list itself is a dictionary with keys "Clock," "NSGlobalDomain," and so on; each value is also a dictionary, which contains the individual defaults.
{
Clock = {ClockStyle = 3; };
NSGlobalDomain = {24HourClock = Yes; Language = English; };
NeXT1 = {Keymap = /NextLibrary/Keyboards/NeXTUSA; };
Viewer = {NSBrowserColumnWidth = 145; "NSWindow Frame Preferences" = "5 197 395 309 "; };
Workspace = {SelectedTabIndex = 0; WindowOrigin = "-75.000000"; };
pbs = {};
}
<<TM notice for Unicode?>>
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Created by unroff & hp-tools. © somebody (See intro for details). All Rights Reserved. Last modified 11/5/97