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Comment by jfoutz | Hacker News Reader

this has two of my favorite features!

1. comments aren't part of the parse tree, so I can quickly strip all comments by a quick parse print cycle. This is really helpful if you want to do automate changes to the files.

2. I can freely truncate the file at (almost) any point, and still have a valid config file. It's not obvious up front, but if your file gets snipped at some point, it's won't cause parse errors (usually) consumers of the file.

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The parent comment is irony. I've been wrestling with some declarative configuration, and it's getting to that frustrating scale where things are almost the same but a little different.

2. isn't too bad in yaml, since json is valid yaml, a broken file can be reliably picked up with leading '{' and trailing '}'

With regard to 1 - both comments and nonstandard formatting like the above {} hack, are currently hard.

Anyway, got to spend some time outside, and away from screens. Apologies for the snark.

2. Add someone says in another comment, isn't that a mistake? What if my file is accidentally cut? In which cases would I want to snip my file without editing it?

Could be missing the start of the file too, in rarer cases.

Wonder what the best start of file and EOF-equivalent sentinel would be to use for YAML-esque files.

Something like a double colon?

  ::
  item1:
    - etc..
  ::

Regarding #2, would you really be ok with loading half a configuration file? Or am I misunderstanding your point?

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