Semantic Programming Language for VS Code

Official Visual Studio Code language support and TextMate-compatible syntax grammar for the Semantic Programming Language.

VS Code support

The extension registers Semantic as a language in Visual Studio Code and associates these official formats:

Extension	Role	Text/Binary	Syntax highlighting
`.se`	Primary Semantic source/transport format	UTF-8 text	Yes
`.sp`	Legacy/alternative readable Semantic transport	UTF-8 text	Yes
`.spz`	Lossless block-compressed Semantic transport	Binary	No

.spz is registered with VS Code so files are associated with the Semantic language. Because .spz contains compressed binary data, the TextMate grammar intentionally does not attempt to tokenize its contents.

Features

Semantic language registration in VS Code
.se, .sp, and .spz file association
TextMate syntax highlighting for .se and .sp
# line comments
bracket and quote auto-closing
bracket and quote surrounding pairs
highlighting for Semantic headers, sections, references, constants, numbers, field keys, and operators

The canonical readable envelope starts with either:

se 1
program {
    schema = 1
}

or:

sp 1
program {
    schema = 1
}

TextMate scope

source.semantic

The grammar supports:

# comments
se 1 / sp 1 headers
program, object, list, ranges
native Semantic sections such as types, scopes, nodes, and relations
quoted strings and escapes
numbers, booleans, null, and unknown
Semantic references such as %12 and @3
relation arrows (->)
compact and readable field assignments

Development

Run the metadata/grammar validation with:

npm test

To test the extension locally in VS Code, open this repository in VS Code and press F5 to launch an Extension Development Host.

To create a VSIX package, install Microsoft's VS Code extension packaging tool and run:

npx @vscode/vsce package

GitHub Linguist

Preparation material is under linguist/.

The recommended Linguist submission requests:

.se as the primary extension
.sp as a secondary extension shared with SourcePawn, with a content heuristic
.spz documented as an official Semantic binary transport, but not registered as a source-code extension because GitHub Linguist classifies text source and .spz is compressed binary data

If maintainers explicitly agree to index .spz as an extension, linguist/languages-with-spz.yml contains the requested all-format variant.

Source of syntax truth

The grammar is based on the canonical Semantic serializer/parser:

Semantic Programming Language main repository
Code Transpiler internal/backend/semantic_sp.go
docs/SP_LANGUAGE.md
docs/SFPC.md

License

MIT.