YAML-YAML Ain’t Markup Language

YAML - The language

• YAML is a markup language that dates back to 2001 by Clark Evants.

  Originally it’s named as Yet Another Markup Language.

• It’s human-readable data serialization format.

  The purpose is to focus on data, than on doucmentation markup.

Features

• Provides structures that can be easily mapped to common data types in most high-level languages including:
  • list
  • associative array
  • scalar
• Indented outline and lean apperance
  • suited for configuration files
  • documentation headers like Markdown file header
  • well-suited for hierarchical data representation

• Line and whitespace delimiters are friendly to grep/perl/python/ruby operations

• Very easy for human read/write

Basic elements

• Lists

  1. Conventional block format use hyphen+space to begin a new item - just like markdown syntax, exmple:

     —#Favoriate movies

     • Casablanca
     • Roman Holiday
     • Kill Bill

1. Optional inline format use JSON similar syntax, like

    [milk, pie, eggs, juice]
   

• Associate array

1. Keys are seperated from values by colon+space, like

       name: John Smith
       age: 33
   

2. Inline blocks, like python dict

       {name: John Smith, age: 33}
   

• Block literal - strings don’t require quotation.

Basic elements

• Lists of associative arrays - can be composed by any of the format

    - {name:John, age:22}
    - name: Jason
      age: 27
  

• Associative array of lists - can be composed by any of the format

    men: [John, Bill]
    women: 
        - Mary
        - Susan
  

Reference

The wiki page can be found Here.