Best way to store config or preferences in a multi-platform way.

[Ivan Illarionov]

On Thu, 01 May 2008 14:13:08 -0500, Jon Ribbens wrote:

> On 2008-05-01, Ivan Illarionov <ivan.illarionov at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I used XML files before for this purpose and found YAML much easier and
>> better suitable for the task.
>>
>> Please explain why don't like YANL so much?
> 
> Because even the examples in the spec itself are unreadable gibberish.
> The PyYAML library is over 300kB! These are rather big clues that it's
> unsuitable for the purpose for which it was designed. It's certainly
> unsuitable for use as a configuration file format, where it is overkill
> by several orders of magnitude.
> 
>   !!str &a1 "foo":
>   !!str bar
>   &a2 baz : *a1
>   !<tag:yaml.org,2002:str> foo :
>   !<!bar> baz
> 
> This is supposed to be human readable?

Thanx, now I see your point. I didn't mean all the fancy features of 
YAML, but the most basic sintax.

Compare this:
    <user id="babooey" on="cpu1">
        <firstname>Bob</firstname>
        <lastname>Abooey</lastname>
        <department>adv</department>
        <cell>555-1212</cell>
        <address password="xxxx">ahunter at example1.com</address>
        <address password="xxxx">babooey at example2.com</address>
    </user>

and this:
        babooey:
            computer : cpu1
            firstname: Bob
            lastname: Abooey
            cell: 555-1212
            addresses:
                - address: babooey at example1.com
                  password: xxxx
                - address: babooey at example2.com
                  password: xxxx

I find the latter *much* more readable.

And the most important thing is that it *maps directly to Python data 
types*, in this case dictionaries and lists:
{babooey: {computer: cpu1, firstname: Bob, lastname: Abooey, cell: 555, 
1212, addresses: [{address: babooey at example1.com, password: xxxx},
{address: babooey at example2.com, password: xxxx}]}

I took the example from 
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/10/29/14225/062
I haven't use my own example only because I don't have one at hand right 
now. YAML, in its simple form, definetely makes me more productive. I 
wasted too much time with XML in the past and I won't ever use it as a 
serialization or config/settings format again. .INI/ConfigParser is too 
limited and has no standards. I just don't see anything better than YAML 
to do human and Python editable config files and to serialize information 
for later use.

>> PS. Your reply remind me of early days of Python when Perl programmers
>> said exacly the same thing about Python.
> 
> I think I would suffer irony overload if I saw a Perl programmer
> criticising Python for being hard to read ;-)