Docs/ Glossary

The following terms have particular definitions as it relates to their usage within the Amazon Ion Specification documents.

Symbol Token

A symbol token is a piece of text mapped to a integer symbol ID by a symbol table. In the binary format a symbol token is always encoded using the integer, not the text.

Such tokens occur in three distinct contexts within the data model: symbol values, annotations, and field names.

Symbol Value

A symbol value is a scalar value (like an integer or string) that is encoded as a symbol token.

Value Stream

A (potentially unbounded) sequence of Ion values in either text or binary.