Tom's Obvious, Minimal Language (TOML, originally Tom's Own Markup Language) is a file format for configuration files. It is designed to be easy to read and write by being minimal (unlike the more-complex YAML) and by using human-readable syntax. The project standardizes the implementation of the ubiquitous INI file format (which it has largely supplanted), removing ambiguity from its interpretation. Originally created by Tom Preston-Werner, the TOML specification is open source. TOML is used in a number of software projects and is implemented by all popular programming languages.
TOML's syntax primarily consists of, among other constructs, <code>key = value</code> pairs, <code>[section names]</code>, and <code>#</code> (for comments). TOML's syntax is a superset of the .INI format but has one agreed-upon formal specification, whereas the .INI format suffers from many competing variants (most implicitly specified through project-specific parsers).
Exceeding stringly-typed semantics, TOML supports the following data types: string, integer, float, boolean, datetime, array, and table.
TOML is used in a variety of settings, such as: