Because that’s annoying. YAML is often written and read by humans. If you want a verbose and more regular way to do it, there is always JSON. But JSON is really annoying to deal with for humans, although it is much better than YAML for several applications.
I can't tell if it's irony or not given the sentiment in this thread, but that is not a declaration of a multiline Description field, that's a field of User named "Description:>-" that happens to be missing its trailing ":"
Seeing that used systemically, versus just for "risky" fields makes me want to draw attention to the fantastic remarshal tool[1], which offers a "--yaml-style >" (and "|" and the rest) which will render yaml fields quoted as one wishes
> I can't tell if it's irony or not given the sentiment in this thread, but that is not a declaration of a multiline Description field, that's a field of User named "Description:>-" that happens to be missing its trailing ":"
I do agree it’s a bit of a kludge. But if you want data types and unquoted strings then anything you do to the syntax to denote strings over other data types then becomes a bit of a kludge.
The one good thing about this kludge is it allows for string literals (ie no complicated escaping rules).
> Seeing that used systemically, versus just for "risky" fields makes me want to draw attention to the fantastic remarshal tool[1], which offers a "--yaml-style >" (and "|" and the rest) which will render yaml fields quoted as one wishes
I don’t really understand what you’re alluding to here.
Tell us that you didn't try to use that example without telling us you just eyeballed the post
$ /usr/local/opt/ansible/libexec/bin/python3 -c 'import sys, yaml; print(yaml.safe_load(sys.stdin.read()))' <<YML
User:
Name: >-
Bob
Phone: >-
01234 56789
Description:>-
This is a
multi line
description
YML
yaml.scanner.ScannerError: while scanning a simple key
in "<unicode string>", line 6, column 6:
Description:>-
$ gojq --yaml-input . <<YML
User:
Name: >-
Bob
Phone: >-
01234 56789
Description:>-
This is a
multi line
description
YML
gojq: invalid yaml: <stdin>:6
6 | Description:>-
^ could not find expected ':'
That's because, for better or worse, yaml considers that a legitimate key name, just missing its delimiter
$ gojq --yaml-input . <<YML
User:
Name: >-
Bob
Phone: >-
01234 56789
Description:>-:
This is a
multi line
description
YML
{
"User": {
"Description:>-": "This is a multi line description",
"Name": "Bob",
"Phone": "01234 56789"
}
}
This exchange in a thread complaining about the whitespace sensitivity doesn't escape me
As for remarshal, it was the systemic application of that quoting style that made me think of it, since writing { Name: >- Bob} is the worst of both worlds: not as legible as the plain unquoted version, not suitable for grep, and indentation sensitive
The issue is the lack of white space between the : and the >, not a missing : at the end. I’m typing this on my phone so the odd syntax error might creep in but the key pointer is the examples I linked to and the block token I’ve described.
Further to that point, none of the example links I’ve shared have the : at the end and I have production code that works using the formatting I’ve described. So you’re flat out wrong there with your assumption that block keys always terminate with :
> As for remarshal, it was the systemic application of that quoting style that made me think of it, since writing { Name: >- Bob} is the worst of both worlds: not as legible as the plain unquoted version, not suitable for grep, and indentation sensitive
You wouldn’t write code like that because >- denotes a block and you’re now inlining a string.
I mean I’ve shared links explaining how this works and you’re clearly not reading them.
At the end of the day, I’m not going to argue that >- (and its ilk) solves everything. It clearly doesn’t. If you want to write “minimized” YAML using JSON syntax then you’re far far better off quoting the string.
But if you are writing a string in YAML and either don’t want to deal with quotation marks, or need that string to be a string literal (ie not having to escape things like quotation marks) then my suggestion is an option.
It’s not there as a silver bullet but it is a lesser known feature of YAML. Hence me sharing.
Now go read the links and understand it better. You might genuinely find it useful under some scenarios ;)
I enjoy that you're scolding me about 'not reading' after doubling down the accuracy of your initial post, which, yes, I can easily imagine you did from your phone
And yet I brought receipts for my claims, and you just bring "reed the manul, n00b"
Firstly, I didn't say "read the manual", I said "read the links I shared". And that's a pretty reasonable comment to make given I took the time to find examples knowing that I couldn't easily type them out on my phone. And if you bothered to open the links you'd realize they were brief and to the point. I was actually trying to be helpful.
Secondly, your "receipts" were incorrect. Neither of your examples follows the examples I cited, and your second example creates a key named "Description:>-", which is clearly wrong. Hence why ">-" needs to be after the colon.
Here is more examples and evidence of how to use >- and why your "receipts" were also incorrect:
One final point: I don't understand why you're being so argumentative here. I posted a lesser-known YAML feature in case it helps some people and you've turned it into some kind of pissing match based on bad-faith interpretations of my comments. There was no need for you to do that.
