yaml parser

[vince_faller]

For a lot of my python stuff configs are in .yml.  

I'm currently using pyyaml to a dict and pulling it in that way but if it could read it directly, that'd be cool.  

That being said, I understand that the yaml spec is a large undertaking.  

[SamGardner]

@vince_faller interesting idea.  We would like to understand better how a JMP user would or could use a YAML file in their work.  Also, this seems like a really good candidate for a JMP Script/Addin to prototype and illustrate the value.  Do you have something like that already?

[vince_faller]

My immediate use is piggybacking off my gitlab-ci.yml in order to grab the parameters of the pipeline.  For long term stuff I'd say that lots of configs are in yml because it's basically a JSON that allows commenting with a more human readable format. Currently in JSL we only really have two options for configs that I know of but there are problems for both.  

• .jsl
  • This obviously isn't good for cross platform projects  (Lots of my stuff is some python, some JSL)
• .json
  • This doesn't allow for comments

When I was at predictum I looked at a bunch of configs and I'll give my opinionated view of the other options

• ini
  • fine for simple configs, but gets messy when hierarchical configs start to happen
  • still doesn't allow comments
• toml
  • allows comments,
  • better than ini for heirarchies but can still get messy
• json
  • no comments
  • standard is great hierarchical structures
• yaml
  • comments are allowed
  • hierarchical structures are human readable
  • anchors and aliases allow configs to be more DRY (admittedly this probably wouldn't be used much for 99% of JSL users)
• jsl
  • Non-starter because other languages can't use it.