VMF is the format used by the Hammer editor to store maps before their compilation. Since VMF has a syntax similar to JSON, I decided to write a VMF parser in JavaScript. I have no idea why.

The code is interesting because it's doesn't have to be a map you're parsing. You can actually use the VMF format to store any kind of data, JSON like.

See test/example.js for an usage example.

The module exports a single parse(input, options) function. The input is a VMF source string, and options is an optional object with the following properties:

• ast: If true, will return the Abstract Syntax Tree instead of the transformed object.

This is a unique functionnality of VMF, non-existent in JSON: the ability to have multiple key with the same name but different values. Here's an example :

{ "someKey": 42, "someKey": "someValue" }

If you try to parse this, you'll obtain this JS object :

{ someKey: "someValue" }

But with VMF, you can do this:

"someKey" "42" "someKey" "someValue" 

And you'll get this object instead :

{ someKey: ["42", "someValue"] }