The use of a JSON-Schema could allow straightforward validation of decay files if written in JSON format. This could greatly simplify the parsing of dec files both within EvtGen and by experiment software.

Both python and C++ implementations of JSON schema validators exist (those linked are just examples, although they appear to be the most relevant to our use cases), which means straightforward validation could be built into both CI checks (python) and the actual dec file parsing code in the EvtGen library (C++).

As a test case, we could create a schema for and implement such validation of the JSON test driver files, before deciding whether to go ahead with the more complex case of the dec files.