vesel 0.2.1

A lightweight binary file format for UTF-8 text.

VESEL

A tiny binary file format written in Python.

VESEL files store UTF-8 text data inside a custom binary container with magic number validation and versioning support.

This project was created to explore how file formats work under the hood by implementing one from scratch.

Features

• Custom binary file format
• Magic number validation
• Version checking
• UTF-8 text storage
• Cross-platform file handling using pathlib
• Simple and extensible format design

Quick Example

from vesel import VeselIO, Version, Header, VeselFile

file = VeselFile(
    header=Header(
        version=Version(0, 2, 0)
    ),
    payload=b"Hello World"
)

VeselIO.write(
    "hello.vesel",
    file
)

loaded = VeselIO.read(
    "hello.vesel"
)

print(
    loaded.payload.decode("utf-8")
)

Project Structure

vesel/
├── docs/
│   └── specifications.md
├── examples/
│   └── basic_usage.py
├── src/
│   └── vesel/
│       ├── __init__.py
│       ├── cli.py
│       ├── constants.py
│       ├── exceptions.py
│       ├── io.py
│       ├── models.py
│       └── utils.py
├── tests/
│   └── test_io.py
├── LICENSE
├── pyproject.toml
├── README.md
└── the-first.vesel

Directory Overview

Path	Purpose
docs/	Technical documentation and format specifications
examples/	Example programs demonstrating Vesel usage
src/vesel/	Main package source code
tests/	Automated test suite
LICENSE	Project license
pyproject.toml	Package configuration and build settings
README.md	Project overview and usage guide
the-first.vesel	First Vesel file created during development

Core Modules

Module	Responsibility
models.py	Data structures (Version, Header, VeselFile)
io.py	Serialization, deserialization, file reading and writing
constants.py	Format-wide constants such as magic bytes
exceptions.py	Custom Vesel exceptions
utils.py	Shared helper functions
cli.py	Command-line interface
__init__.py	Public package exports

## Specification

The complete VESEL format specification can be found in:

```text
docs/specifications.md

Why?

Most developers interact with file formats every day:

• ZIP
• PNG
• PDF
• MP3

VESEL exists as a learning project to understand how binary formats are structured, parsed, and versioned.

Future Ideas

• Metadata support
• Multiple data sections
• Compression
• Encryption
• Archive/container support
• CLI tooling
• Formal specification revisions

License

MIT License

---

"The first vessel is made."