Canonical S-expressions (original) (raw)

A Canonical S-expression (or csexp) is a binary encoding form of a subset of general S-expression (or sexp). It was designed for use in SPKI to retain the power of S-expressions and ensure canonical form for applications such as digital signatures while achieving the compactness of a binary form and maximizing the speed of parsing. The particular subset of general S-expressions applicable here is composed of atoms, which are byte strings, and parentheses used to delimit lists or sub-lists. These S-expressions are fully recursive.