Usage - MATLAB Binding

Encoding and decoding

matlab

% Encode a MATLAB struct to a TOON string
s = ctoon.encode(struct('name', 'Alice', 'age', uint64(30), 'active', true));

% Decode back
v = ctoon.decode(s);
v.name    % → 'Alice'
v.age     % → uint64(30)
v.active  % → true

File I/O

matlab

% Write
cfg.host = 'localhost';
cfg.port = uint64(8080);
ctoon.write(cfg, 'config.toon');

% Read
cfg = ctoon.read('config.toon');

Type mapping

MATLAB type	TOON type
[] (empty double)	null
logical scalar	bool
double scalar	real
int64 scalar	signed integer
uint64 scalar	unsigned integer
char / string	str
cell array	array
struct (scalar)	object

TOON spec version

The toon-format/spec release this build targets is returned in the metadata struct of ctoon.version:

matlab

[~, info] = ctoon.version();
info.Spec.Version   % → '4.1'
info.Spec.Tag       % → 'v4.1.2'
info.Spec.Date      % → '2026-07-26'

ctoon.version() with no output also prints it.

Error handling

All functions throw MATLAB errors with structured identifiers:

matlab

try
    v = ctoon.decode('bad input');
catch e
    e.identifier   % → 'ctoon:decodeError'
    e.message
end

Identifier	Cause
ctoon:decodeError	Invalid TOON string
ctoon:readError	File not found or parse error
ctoon:writeError	Cannot write to file
ctoon:badArg	Wrong argument type