LDRAW file format specification

LDRAW files need to have a specific syntax to be understood by the various tools.

The syntax has been invented by James Jessiman and carefully extended since then.

You can find the definition of that syntax at

• http://www.ldraw.org/documentation/ldraw-org-file-format-standards.html

The syntax is taken care of by the LDraw Standards Board.

Advantages

• the syntax is text-based (not: binary), which makes it
  • easily human-readable
  • easily diffable by diff tools
  • easy to store on source code revision control systems (like for example git)
• the syntax is quite compact:
  • the most frequent elements can be written in simple, compact syntax, without lots of syntax clutter around it (as for example in XML)

Disadvantages

• the syntax is "line-by-line based", this makes designing statements very difficult which aim to refer to a bunch of lines as a whole