On Mar 1, 1:37 pm, Paul Rubin <no.em...@nospam.invalid> wrote: > There are in fact quite a few--json, yaml, .ini, xml, Python literals > (http://code.activestate.com/recipes/364469-safe-eval/), s-expressions, > actual Python code that the application can import, and so forth.
Yes, I know about those. > The problem isn't that you're trying to invent a useless file format per > se, but rather that in trying to get other people to learn it and use > it, you're also trying to appropriate a chunk of the user community's > scarce and precious brain cells without good justification. Newbie > designers are often lured into that and they're unfortunately (i.e. to > the community's detrimtent) often more successful than they really > should be. Can't disagree with the statement about newbie designers. On the flip side, sometimes things wind up being defacto standards, simply because nobody could be bothered to write a better one, and they have lots of little niggling warts that also collectively take up a lot of time and attention. There is obviously a good balance somewhere. > Your one complaint about yaml is that it's slow to parse. Why do you > care about the parsing speed of a config file? If the existing > implementation is too slow, why not write a faster one instead of > designing yayaml? Even yaml is excessive in my view. "Yet another" was > an ok plan when Steve Johnson started the trope by writing Yacc 30 years > ago. These days, don't do yet another without very convincing reasons > for rejecting what is already there. One of my complaints. If you had read the document you would have seen others. I actually have several complaints about YAML, but I tried to write a cogent summary. Regards, Pat -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list