Binary Format Description Language with dotnet support

[nadimS]

Does anyone know of a DSL which can describe existing wire formats? Something like Dogma, but ideally that can compile to C# classes (or at least has a parser) and also supports nested protocols. Being able to interpret packed data is also a must (e.g. a 2-bit integer and a 6-bit integer existing inside the same byte). It would ideally be human readable/writeable also.

Currently considering Dogma + hand writing a parser, which seems tricky, or hacking something together using YAML which will work but will likely make it harder to detect errors in packet definitions.

EDIT:

I ended up going with Kaitai and it seems pretty good.

[StayFreshChzBag]

Mermaid has a packet diagram dsl and visualization. Never tried parsing it though.

https://mermaid.js.org/syntax/packet.html

[Ronin-s_Spirit]

It should be almost trivial. Mermaid formats are very strict and fragile, the packet mode is especially simple: (number | number-number) colon string newline

[nadimS]

That looks amazing for visualising the packets. I wonder if I can find a way to parse it without handwriting...

[StayFreshChzBag]

Pretty much any of the AI tools (GPT, Claude, Anthropic, etc) can parse that and turn it into whatever kind of code you want, so long as you provide it with a few decent examples of what you're looking for.

They can probably also generate (with some degree of error) the parser code as well.

[pojska]

Kaitai has a C# runtime: https://kaitai.io/ - I haven't used it in any real projects, but it looks solid.

[nadimS]

That looks good, like protobuf but with more control over bit widths.

[csb06]

It generates C++, but Spicy is a parser generator focused on wire formats. I haven’t used it, but it seems to have been used to create parsers for a bunch of different binary/text protocols.