Comment on Evil

• ryathal@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  XML is ok for complex docs where you have a detailed structure and relationships. JSON is good for simple objects. YAML is good for being something to switch to for the illusion of progress.

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  • Earflap@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Meh. I just wish XML was easier to parse. I have to shuttle a lot of XML data back and forth. As far as I can tell, the only way to query the data is to download a whole engine to run a special query language, and that doesn’t really integrate into any of my workflows. JSON retains the hierarchy and is trivially parsed in almost any programming language. I bet a JSON file containing the exact same data would be much smaller also, since you don’t list each tag twice.

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    • bob_lemon@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I still want someone to explain to me why XML even needs namespaces (which cause about 95% of all issues regarding XML).

      There is a way to separate different XML structures, it’s called files.

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    • JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      XML is also tricky to parse because people forget it is for documents too. It’s basically like HTML. Mixed content elements are allowed. <foo>hey <bar>there</bar> friend</foo> is valid XML. So iterating over elements is trickier than JSON (which is just key value pairs and arrays).

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    • ryathal@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      There are parsing libraries, maybe not as many or as open, but they exist.

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      • Earflap@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        That’s kind of my point though. For being made specifically for the purpose of being machine readable, its kind of a pain in the ass to work with.

        I want a command line utility where I can just

        xmlquery --query 'some/query' --file foo.xml --output foo-out.xml
        

        or in python

        
        import xml
        
        with open("foo.xml", "r") as file:
            data = xml.load(file.read())
        

        That’s the amount of effort I want to put into parsing a data storage format.

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• JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  YAML is evil.

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• jonne@infosec.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  It’s still using the lesser of 3 evils, we need a fourth structural markup language.

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  • cm0002@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    "Problem: There are 3 4 standards

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    • laurelraven@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Obligatory xkcd

      Standards

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  • pivot_root@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    >TOML has entered the channel

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  • acockworkorange@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    The lesser of what?

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• tinkling4938@lemmynsfw.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  YAML is (mostly) a superset of JSON. Is the face hugger any less evil than the alien bursting out of your chest?

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  • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    It’s got enough serious flaws and quirks that I can feel smug hating on it. JSON is far from perfect, but overall it’s the least worst of human-readable formats.

    Only Python manages to get away with syntactical indentation.

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    • renzev@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      The complaints about yaml’s quirks (no evaluating to false, implicit strings, weird number formats, etc.) are valid in theory but I’ve never encountered them causing any real-life issues.

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      • AnyOldName3@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        no doesn’t become false, it becomes Norway, and when converted to a boolean, Norway is true. The reason’s because one on YAML’s native types is an ISO country code enum, and if you tell a compliant YAML implementation to load a file without giving it a schema, that type has higher priority than string. If you then call a function that converts from native type to string, it expands the country code to the country name, and a function that coerces to boolean makes country codes true.

        The problem’s easy to avoid, though. You can just specify a schema, or use a function that grabs a string/bool directly instead of going via the assumed type first.

        The real problem with YAML is how many implementations are a long way from being conformant, and load things differently to each other, but that situation’s been improving.

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• Arghblarg@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Hmm, hard to argue with that :P

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• DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Idk, I never used the weird advanced features of YAML, but the basics seems really nice for stuff you want a non programmer to edit.

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