Object Deprecated

An Object is an unordered associative array of name-value pairs, where values may be of any type and are not defined explicitly.

An Object can be initialized using an object literal value, which begins with the object keyword followed by a comma-separated list of name-value pairs in braces ({}), where name-value pairs are delimited by :. The member names in an object literal are not quoted. The value of a specific member of an Object value can be accessed by placing a . followed by the member name after the identifier.

Example: test_object.wdl

version 1.2

workflow test_object {
  output {
    Object obj = object {
      a: 10,
      b: "hello"
    }
    Int i = obj.a
  }
}

{}

{
  "test_object.obj": {
    "a": 10,
    "b": "hello"
  },
  "test_object.i": 10
}

Due to the lack of explicitness in the typing of Object being at odds with the goal of being able to know the type information of all WDL declarations, the use of the Object type and the object literal syntax have been deprecated. In WDL 2.0, Object will become a hidden type that may only be instantiated by the execution engine. Object declarations can be replaced with use of structs.