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YAML(3) |
User Contributed Perl Documentation |
YAML(3) |
YAML - YAML Ain't Markup Language™
This document describes YAML version 1.30.
This module has been released to CPAN as YAML::Old, and soon YAML.pm will be
changed to just be a frontend interface module for all the various Perl YAML
implementation modules, including YAML::Old.
If you want robust and fast YAML processing using the normal
Dump/Load API, please consider switching to YAML::XS. It is by far the best
Perl module for YAML at this time. It requires that you have a C compiler,
since it is written in C.
If you really need to use this version of YAML.pm it will always
be available as YAML::Old.
The rest of this documentation is left unchanged, until YAML.pm is
switched over to the new UI-only version.
use YAML;
# Load a YAML stream of 3 YAML documents into Perl data structures.
my ($hashref, $arrayref, $string) = Load(<<'...');
---
name: ingy # A Mapping
age: old
weight: heavy
# I should comment that I also like pink, but don't tell anybody.
favorite colors:
- red
- green
- blue
---
- Clark Evans # A Sequence
- Oren Ben-Kiki
- Ingy döt Net
--- > # A Block Scalar
You probably think YAML stands for "Yet Another Markup Language". It
ain't! YAML is really a data serialization language. But if you want
to think of it as a markup, that's OK with me. A lot of people try
to use XML as a serialization format.
"YAML" is catchy and fun to say. Try it. "YAML, YAML, YAML!!!"
...
# Dump the Perl data structures back into YAML.
print Dump($string, $arrayref, $hashref);
# YAML::Dump is used the same way you'd use Data::Dumper::Dumper
use Data::Dumper;
print Dumper($string, $arrayref, $hashref);
Since version 1.25 YAML.pm supports trailing comments.
The YAML.pm module implements a YAML Loader and Dumper based on the YAML 1.0
specification. <http://www.yaml.org/spec/>
YAML is a generic data serialization language that is optimized
for human readability. It can be used to express the data structures of most
modern programming languages. (Including Perl!!!)
For information on the YAML syntax, please refer to the YAML
specification.
- YAML is readable for people.
- It makes clear sense out of complex data structures. You should find that
YAML is an exceptional data dumping tool. Structure is shown through
indentation, YAML supports recursive data, and hash keys are sorted by
default. In addition, YAML supports several styles of scalar formatting
for different types of data.
- YAML is editable.
- YAML was designed from the ground up to be an excellent syntax for
configuration files. Almost all programs need configuration files, so why
invent a new syntax for each one? And why subject users to the
complexities of XML or native Perl code?
- YAML is multilingual.
- Yes, YAML supports Unicode. But I'm actually referring to programming
languages. YAML was designed to meet the serialization needs of Perl,
Python, Ruby, Tcl, PHP, Javascript and Java. It was also designed to be
interoperable between those languages. That means YAML serializations
produced by Perl can be processed by Python.
- YAML is taint safe.
- Using modules like Data::Dumper for serialization is fine as long as you
can be sure that nobody can tamper with your data files or transmissions.
That's because you need to use Perl's
"eval()" built-in to deserialize the
data. Somebody could add a snippet of Perl to erase your files.
YAML's parser does not need to eval anything.
- YAML is full featured.
- YAML can accurately serialize all of the common Perl data structures and
deserialize them again without losing data relationships. Although it is
not 100% perfect (no serializer is or can be perfect), it fares as well as
the popular current modules: Data::Dumper, Storable, XML::Dumper and
Data::Denter.
YAML.pm also has the ability to handle code (subroutine)
references and typeglobs. (Still experimental) These features are not
found in Perl's other serialization modules.
- YAML is extensible.
- The YAML language has been designed to be flexible enough to solve it's
own problems. The markup itself has 3 basic construct which resemble
Perl's hash, array and scalar. By default, these map to their Perl
equivalents. But each YAML node also supports a tagging mechanism (type
system) which can cause that node to be interpreted in a completely
different manner. That's how YAML can support object serialization and
oddball structures like Perl's typeglob.
This module, YAML.pm, is really just the interface module for YAML modules
written in Perl. The basic interface for YAML consists of two functions:
"Dump" and
"Load". The real work is done by the modules
YAML::Dumper and YAML::Loader.
Different YAML module distributions can be created by subclassing
YAML.pm and YAML::Loader and YAML::Dumper. For example, YAML-Simple consists
of YAML::Simple YAML::Dumper::Simple and YAML::Loader::Simple.
Why would there be more than one implementation of YAML? Well,
despite YAML's offering of being a simple data format, YAML is actually very
deep and complex. Implementing the entirety of the YAML specification is a
daunting task.
For this reason I am currently working on 3 different YAML
implementations.
- YAML
- The main YAML distribution will keeping evolving to support the entire
YAML specification in pure Perl. This may not be the fastest or most
stable module though. Currently, YAML.pm has lots of known bugs. It is
mostly a great tool for dumping Perl data structures to a readable
form.
- YAML::Tiny
- The point of YAML::Tiny is to strip YAML down to the 90% that people use
most and offer that in a small, fast, stable, pure Perl form. YAML::Tiny
will simply die when it is asked to do something it can't.
- YAML::Syck
- "libsyck" is the C based YAML processing
library used by the Ruby programming language (and also Python, PHP and
Pugs). YAML::Syck is the Perl binding to
"libsyck". It should be very fast, but
may have problems of its own. It will also require C compilation.
NOTE: Audrey Tang has actually completed this module and it
works great and is
10 times faster than YAML.pm.
In the future, there will likely be even more YAML modules.
Remember, people other than Ingy are allowed to write YAML modules!
YAML is completely OO under the hood. Still it exports a few useful top level
functions so that it is dead simple to use. These functions just do the OO
stuff for you. If you want direct access to the OO API see the documentation
for YAML::Dumper and YAML::Loader.
The following functions are exported by YAML.pm by default. The reason they are
exported is so that YAML works much like Data::Dumper. If you don't want
functions to be imported, just use YAML with an empty import list:
use YAML ();
- Dump(list-of-Perl-data-structures)
- Turn Perl data into YAML. This function works very much like
Data::Dumper::Dumper(). It takes a list of Perl data structures and
dumps them into a serialized form. It returns a string containing the YAML
stream. The structures can be references or plain scalars.
- Load(string-containing-a-YAML-stream)
- Turn YAML into Perl data. This is the opposite of Dump. Just like
Storable's thaw() function or the eval() function in
relation to Data::Dumper. It parses a string containing a valid YAML
stream into a list of Perl data structures.
These functions are not exported by default but you can request them in an
import list like this:
use YAML qw'freeze thaw Bless';
- freeze() and thaw()
- Aliases to Dump() and Load() for Storable fans. This will
also allow YAML.pm to be plugged directly into modules like POE.pm, that
use the freeze/thaw API for internal serialization.
- DumpFile(filepath, list)
- Writes the YAML stream to a file instead of just returning a string.
- LoadFile(filepath)
- Reads the YAML stream from a file instead of a string.
- Bless(perl-node, [yaml-node | class-name])
- Associate a normal Perl node, with a yaml node. A yaml node is an object
tied to the YAML::Node class. The second argument is either a yaml node
that you've already created or a class (package) name that supports a
"yaml_dump()" function. A
"yaml_dump()" function should take a
perl node and return a yaml node. If no second argument is provided, Bless
will create a yaml node. This node is not returned, but can be retrieved
with the Blessed() function.
Here's an example of how to use Bless. Say you have a hash
containing three keys, but you only want to dump two of them.
Furthermore the keys must be dumped in a certain order. Here's how you
do that:
use YAML qw(Dump Bless);
$hash = {apple => 'good', banana => 'bad', cauliflower => 'ugly'};
print Dump $hash;
Bless($hash)->keys(['banana', 'apple']);
print Dump $hash;
produces:
---
apple: good
banana: bad
cauliflower: ugly
---
banana: bad
apple: good
Bless returns the tied part of a yaml-node, so that you can
call the YAML::Node methods. This is the same thing that
YAML::Node::ynode() returns. So another way to do the above
example is:
use YAML qw(Dump Bless);
use YAML::Node;
$hash = {apple => 'good', banana => 'bad', cauliflower => 'ugly'};
print Dump $hash;
Bless($hash);
$ynode = ynode(Blessed($hash));
$ynode->keys(['banana', 'apple']);
print Dump $hash;
Note that Blessing a Perl data structure does not change it
anyway. The extra information is stored separately and looked up by the
Blessed node's memory address.
- Blessed(perl-node)
- Returns the yaml node that a particular perl node is associated with (see
above). Returns undef if the node is not (YAML) Blessed.
YAML options are set using a group of global variables in the YAML namespace.
This is similar to how Data::Dumper works.
For example, to change the indentation width, do something
like:
local $YAML::Indent = 3;
The current options are:
- DumperClass
- You can override which module/class YAML uses for Dumping data.
- LoadBlessed (since 1.25)
- Default is undef (false)
The default was changed in version 1.30.
When set to true, YAML nodes with special tags will be
automatocally blessed into objects:
- !perl/hash:Foo::Bar
foo: 42
When loading untrusted YAML, you should disable this option by
setting it to 0. This will also disable setting
typeglobs when loading them.
You can create any kind of object with YAML. The creation
itself is not the critical part. If the class has a
"DESTROY" method, it will be called
once the object is deleted. An example with File::Temp removing files
can be found at
<https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=862373>
- LoaderClass
- You can override which module/class YAML uses for Loading data.
- Indent
- This is the number of space characters to use for each indentation level
when doing a Dump(). The default is 2.
By the way, YAML can use any number of characters for
indentation at any level. So if you are editing YAML by hand feel free
to do it anyway that looks pleasing to you; just be consistent for a
given level.
- SortKeys
- Default is 1. (true)
Tells YAML.pm whether or not to sort hash keys when storing a
document.
YAML::Node objects can have their own sort order, which is
usually what you want. To override the YAML::Node order and sort the
keys anyway, set SortKeys to 2.
- Stringify
- Default is 0. (false)
Objects with string overloading should honor the overloading
and dump the stringification of themselves, rather than the actual
object's guts.
- Numify
- Default is 0. (false)
Values that look like numbers (integers, floats) will be
numified when loaded.
- UseHeader
- Default is 1. (true)
This tells YAML.pm whether to use a separator string for a
Dump operation. This only applies to the first document in a stream.
Subsequent documents must have a YAML header by definition.
- UseVersion
- Default is 0. (false)
Tells YAML.pm whether to include the YAML version on the
separator/header.
--- %YAML:1.0
- AnchorPrefix
- Default is ''.
Anchor names are normally numeric. YAML.pm simply starts with
'1' and increases by one for each new anchor. This option allows you to
specify a string to be prepended to each anchor number.
- UseCode
- Setting the UseCode option is a shortcut to set both the DumpCode and
LoadCode options at once. Setting UseCode to '1' tells YAML.pm to dump
Perl code references as Perl (using B::Deparse) and to load them back into
memory using eval(). The reason this has to be an option is that
using eval() to parse untrusted code is, well, untrustworthy.
- DumpCode
- Determines if and how YAML.pm should serialize Perl code references. By
default YAML.pm will dump code references as dummy placeholders (much like
Data::Dumper). If DumpCode is set to '1' or 'deparse', code references
will be dumped as actual Perl code.
- LoadCode
- LoadCode is the opposite of DumpCode. It tells YAML if and how to
deserialize code references. When set to '1' or 'deparse' it will use
"eval()". Since this is potentially
risky, only use this option if you know where your YAML has been.
LoadCode must be enabled also to use the feature of evaluating
typeglobs (because with the typeglob feature you would be able to set
the variable $YAML::LoadCode from a YAML
file).
- Preserve
- When set to true, this option tells the Loader to load hashes into
YAML::Node objects. These are tied hashes. This has the effect of
remembering the key order, thus it will be preserved when the hash is
dumped again. See YAML::Node for more information.
- UseBlock
- YAML.pm uses heuristics to guess which scalar style is best for a given
node. Sometimes you'll want all multiline scalars to use the 'block'
style. If so, set this option to 1.
NOTE: YAML's block style is akin to Perl's here-document.
- UseFold (Not supported anymore since v0.60)
- If you want to force YAML to use the 'folded' style for all multiline
scalars, then set $UseFold to 1.
NOTE: YAML's folded style is akin to the way HTML folds text,
except smarter.
- UseAliases
- YAML has an alias mechanism such that any given structure in memory gets
serialized once. Any other references to that structure are serialized
only as alias markers. This is how YAML can serialize duplicate and
recursive structures.
Sometimes, when you KNOW that your data is nonrecursive in
nature, you may want to serialize such that every node is expressed in
full. (ie as a copy of the original). Setting
$YAML::UseAliases to 0 will allow you to do
this. This also may result in faster processing because the lookup
overhead is by bypassed.
THIS OPTION CAN BE DANGEROUS. If your data is
recursive, this option will cause Dump() to run in an
endless loop, chewing up your computers memory. You have been
warned.
- CompressSeries
- Default is 1.
Compresses the formatting of arrays of hashes:
-
foo: bar
-
bar: foo
becomes:
- foo: bar
- bar: foo
Since this output is usually more desirable, this option is
turned on by default.
- QuoteNumericStrings
- Default is 0. (false)
Adds detection mechanisms to encode strings that resemble
numbers with mandatory quoting.
This ensures leading that things like leading/trailing zeros
and other formatting are preserved.
YAML is a full featured data serialization language, and thus has its own
terminology.
It is important to remember that although YAML is heavily
influenced by Perl and Python, it is a language in its own right, not merely
just a representation of Perl structures.
YAML has three constructs that are conspicuously similar to Perl's
hash, array, and scalar. They are called mapping, sequence, and string
respectively. By default, they do what you would expect. But each instance
may have an explicit or implicit tag (type) that makes it behave
differently. In this manner, YAML can be extended to represent Perl's Glob
or Python's tuple, or Ruby's Bigint.
- stream
-
A YAML stream is the full sequence of Unicode characters that a YAML
parser would read or a YAML emitter would write. A stream may contain
one or more YAML documents separated by YAML headers.
---
a: mapping
foo: bar
---
- a
- sequence
- document
- A YAML document is an independent data structure representation within a
stream. It is a top level node. Each document in a YAML stream must begin
with a YAML header line. Actually the header is optional on the first
document.
---
This: top level mapping
is:
- a
- YAML
- document
- header
- A YAML header is a line that begins a YAML document. It consists of three
dashes, possibly followed by more info. Another purpose of the header line
is that it serves as a place to put top level tag and anchor information.
--- !recursive-sequence &001
- * 001
- * 001
- node
- A YAML node is the representation of a particular data structure. Nodes
may contain other nodes. (In Perl terms, nodes are like scalars. Strings,
arrayrefs and hashrefs. But this refers to the serialized format, not the
in- memory structure.)
- tag
- This is similar to a type. It indicates how a particular YAML node
serialization should be transferred into or out of memory. For instance a
Foo::Bar object would use the tag 'perl/Foo::Bar':
- !perl/Foo::Bar
foo: 42
bar: stool
- collection
- A collection is the generic term for a YAML data grouping. YAML has two
types of collections: mappings and sequences. (Similar to hashes and
arrays)
- mapping
- A mapping is a YAML collection defined by unordered key/value pairs with
unique keys. By default YAML mappings are loaded into Perl hashes.
a mapping:
foo: bar
two: times two is 4
- sequence
- A sequence is a YAML collection defined by an ordered list of elements. By
default YAML sequences are loaded into Perl arrays.
a sequence:
- one bourbon
- one scotch
- one beer
- scalar
- A scalar is a YAML node that is a single value. By default YAML scalars
are loaded into Perl scalars.
a scalar key: a scalar value
YAML has many styles for representing scalars. This is
important because varying data will have varying formatting requirements
to retain the optimum human readability.
- plain scalar
- A plain scalar is unquoted. All plain scalars are automatic candidates for
"implicit tagging". This means that their tag may be determined
automatically by examination. The typical uses for this are plain alpha
strings, integers, real numbers, dates, times and currency.
- a plain string
- -42
- 3.1415
- 12:34
- 123 this is an error
- single quoted scalar
- This is similar to Perl's use of single quotes. It means no escaping
except for single quotes which are escaped by using two adjacent single
quotes.
- 'When I say ''\n'' I mean "backslash en"'
- double quoted scalar
- This is similar to Perl's use of double quotes. Character escaping can be
used.
- "This scalar\nhas two lines, and a bell -->\a"
- folded scalar
- This is a multiline scalar which begins on the next line. It is indicated
by a single right angle bracket. It is unescaped like the single quoted
scalar. Line folding is also performed.
- >
This is a multiline scalar which begins on
the next line. It is indicated by a single
carat. It is unescaped like the single
quoted scalar. Line folding is also
performed.
- block scalar
- This final multiline form is akin to Perl's here-document except that (as
in all YAML data) scope is indicated by indentation. Therefore, no ending
marker is required. The data is verbatim. No line folding.
- |
QTY DESC PRICE TOTAL
--- ---- ----- -----
1 Foo Fighters $19.95 $19.95
2 Bar Belles $29.95 $59.90
- parser
- A YAML processor has four stages: parse, load, dump, emit.
A parser parses a YAML stream. YAML.pm's Load()
function contains a parser.
- loader
- The other half of the Load() function is a loader. This takes the
information from the parser and loads it into a Perl data structure.
- dumper
- The Dump() function consists of a dumper and an emitter. The dumper
walks through each Perl data structure and gives info to the emitter.
- emitter
- The emitter takes info from the dumper and turns it into a YAML stream.
NOTE: In YAML.pm the parserloader and the dumperemitter
code are currently
very closely tied together. In the future they may be broken into
separate stages.
For more information please refer to the immensely helpful YAML
specification available at <http://www.yaml.org/spec/>.
The YAML::Shell distribution provides script called 'ysh', the YAML shell. ysh
provides a simple, interactive way to play with YAML. If you type in Perl
code, it displays the result in YAML. If you type in YAML it turns it into
Perl code.
To run ysh, (assuming you installed it along with YAML.pm) simply
type:
ysh [options]
Please read the "ysh"
documentation for the full details. There are lots of options.
If you find a bug in YAML, please try to recreate it in the YAML Shell with
logging turned on ('ysh -L'). When you have successfully reproduced the bug,
please mail the LOG file to the author (ingy@cpan.org).
WARNING: This is still ALPHA code. Well, most of this code
has been around for years...
BIGGER WARNING: YAML.pm has been slow in the making, but I am
committed to having top notch YAML tools in the Perl world. The YAML team is
close to finalizing the YAML 1.1 spec. This version of YAML.pm is based off
of a very old pre 1.0 spec. In actuality there isn't a ton of difference,
and this YAML.pm is still fairly useful. Things will get much better in the
future.
<http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/yaml-core> is the mailing
list. This is where the language is discussed and designed.
<http://www.yaml.org> is the official YAML website.
<http://www.yaml.org/spec/> is the YAML 1.2
specification.
<http://yaml.kwiki.org> is the official YAML wiki.
Ingy döt Net <ingy@cpan.org>
Copyright 2001-2020. Ingy döt Net.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
See <http://www.perl.com/perl/misc/Artistic.html>
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