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# Text Format
The purpose of this text format is to support:
* View Source on a WebAssembly module, thus fitting into the Web (where every
source can be viewed) in a natural way.
* Presentation in browser development tools when source maps aren't present
(which is necessarily the case with the MVP).
* Writing WebAssembly code directly for reasons including pedagogical,
experimental, debugging, optimization, and testing of the spec itself.
The text format is equivalent and isomorphic to the [binary format](BinaryEncoding.md).
The text format will be standardized, but only for tooling purposes:
* Compilers will support this format for `.S` and inline assembly.
* Debuggers and profilers will present binary code using this textual format.
* Browsers will not parse the textual format on regular web content in order to
implement WebAssembly semantics.
Given that the code representation is actually an
[Abstract Syntax Tree](ASTSemantics.md), the syntax would contain nested
statements and expressions (instead of the linear list of instructions most
assembly languages have).
There is no requirement to use JavaScript syntax; this format is not intended to
be evaluated or translated directly into JavaScript.
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