Re: A grammar challange regarding that pesky YAML format

Alan Painter <alan.painter@gmail.com> writes:
> One of the big regular complaints about XML is that it is "difficult to parse" and yet YAML does not suffer from that complaint in spite of its very dodgy parsing model.

I think “difficult to parse” means something else when applied to XML. I think the complaint about XML boils down to: there are strict rules for XML and you must conform to them: you must open and close tags in a properly nested way, you must put quotes around attribute values, you must declare namespaces before you can use them, etc.

I think the complaints are also, often, about toy examples. Why do I have to write:

 <property name="name">value</property>

when I could just write:

 name: value

If I give you a choice, would you prefer to find the syntax error in 1MB of XML, or JSON, or YAML?

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

--
Norm Tovey-Walsh
CEO, Saxonica

Received on Sunday, 17 May 2026 08:37:09 UTC