Criterion for inclusion: human readable. (which excludes ProtoBuf)
a key / value format where keys can (optionally) be grouped into sections.
cite
; last modified 1 April 2001 by John Doe
[owner]
name=John Doe
organization=Acme Widgets Inc.
[database]
; use IP address in case network name resolution is not working
server=192.0.2.62
port=143
file="payroll.dat"XML = Extensible Markup Language = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion_laughs_attack
JSON = JavaScript Object Notation = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON
Definition: https://www.json.org/json-en.html
- Data stored in name/value pairs
- Records separated by commas. Trailing commas without the following property are not allowed.
- Double quotes wrap property names & strings. Single quotes are not allowed.
- multiline Strings are not supported by JSON.
- Infinity and NaN are not supported in JSON cite
Because JSON does not allow comments, please do not choose JSON as your app’s config file format. For data interchange it’s okay; for config files it’s not. cite
JSON schema: https://json-schema.org/
https://preserves.gitlab.io/preserves/why-not-json.html
Supported by VSCode
https://github.com/Microsoft/node-jsonc-parser and https://komkom.github.io/
JSON5 = https://json5.org/
- Single and multi-line comments are allowed.
- Strings may be single quoted.
- Strings may span multiple lines by escaping new line characters.
- Strings may include character escapes.
- Numbers may be hexadecimal.
- Numbers may have a leading or trailing decimal point.
- Numbers may be IEEE 754 positive infinity, negative infinity, and NaN.
- Numbers may begin with an explicit plus sign.
{
// comments
unquoted: 'and you can quote me on that',
singleQuotes: 'I can use "double quotes" here',
lineBreaks: "Look, Mom! \
No \\n's!",
hexadecimal: 0xdecaf,
leadingDecimalPoint: .8675309, andTrailing: 8675309.,
positiveSign: +1,
trailingComma: 'in objects', andIn: ['arrays',],
"backwardsCompatible": "with JSON",
}YAML = YAML Ain't Markup Language = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YAML
is a superset of JSON, so you can use fully qualified JSON syntax inside YAML
-
.yml files begin with
---, marking the start of the document -
key-value pairs are separated by a colon
-
lists start with a hyphen
-
YAML uses indentation with one or more spaces to describe nested collections cite
-
YAML's semantic feature is that it can represent a possibly cyclic graph.
-
YAML mappings can use complex nodes (sequences or mappings) as keys. cite
Downsides:
- Implicit typing causes surprise type changes. (e.g. put 3 where you previously had a string and it will magically turn into an int).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion_laughs_attack#Variations
tv_shows:
- Seinfeld
- 24
- !!str 90210The second list item is all digits so may be converted to integers. cite
https://github.com/crdoconnor/strictyaml
StrictYAML does not have a proper specification and only a single implementation
cite
TOML = Tom’s Obvious, Minimal Language = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOML
multiline strings, auto-escaping of reserved characters, datatypes such as dates, time, integers, floats, scientific notation, and “table expansion”.
Definition: https://github.com/toml-lang/toml
Unlike YAML, TOML doesn’t rely on whitespace with difficult to read indentation. cite
tv_shows = [
"24",
"Seinfeld",
"90210",
]- TOML is case sensitive.
- A TOML file must contain only UTF-8 encoded Unicode characters.
- Whitespace means tab (0x09) or space (0x20).
- Newline means LF (0x0A) or CRLF (0x0D0A). cite
TOML's main semantic difference is that it doesn't support cycles, complex keys, or tags.
cite
TOML has a conceptual advantage over YAML: Since its structure
allows less freedom, it tends to be easier to read.
cite
TOML's
[a.b.c]
d = 'Hello'
e = 'World'expands to
{
"a": {
"b": {
"c": {
"d": "Hello",
"e": "World"
}
}
}
}SDLang = Simple Declarative Language = https://sdlang.org/
https://github.com/Abscissa/SDLang-D
// This is a node with a single string value
title "Hello, World"
// Multiple values are supported, too
bookmarks 12 15 188 1234
// Nodes can have attributes
author "Peter Parker" email="peter@example.org" active=true
// Nodes can be arbitrarily nested
contents {
section "First section" {
paragraph "This is the first paragraph"
paragraph "This is the second paragraph"
}
}
// Anonymous nodes are supported
"This text is the value of an anonymous node!"
// This makes things like matrix definitions very convenient
matrix {
1 0 0
0 1 0
0 0 1
}
CSON is JSON without the curly braces. CSON instead relies on indentation to determine hierarchy of your data. Multiline strings are easy to write, you can enter comments by starting a line with a hash, and there’s no need for separating key-value pairs with commas.
title = "TOML Example" [owner] name = "Tom Preston-Werner" dob = 1979-05-27T07:32:00-08:00 [database] server = "192.168.1.1" ports = [ 8001, 8001, 8002 ] connection_max = 5000 enabled = true [servers] [servers.alpha] ip = "10.0.0.1" dc = "eqdc10" [servers.beta] ip = "10.0.0.2" dc = "eqdc10" [clients] data = [ ["gamma", "delta"], [1, 2] ] hosts = [ "alpha", "omega" ] |
title: YAML Example
owner:
name: Tom Preston-Werner
dob: 1979-05-27T07:32:00-08:00
database:
server: 192.168.1.1
ports: [ 8001, 8001, 8002 ]
connection_max: 5000
enabled: true
servers:
alpha:
ip: 10.0.0.1
dc: eqdc10
beta:
ip: 10.0.0.2
dc: eqdc10
clients:
data: [ [gamma, delta], [1, 2] ]
hosts:
- alpha
- omega
|
From https://gist.github.com/oconnor663/9aeb4ed56394cb013a20
See a useful comparison on https://gohugohq.com/howto/toml-json-yaml-comparison/
XML vs JSON on https://www.barenakedcoder.com/blog/2020/03/config-files-ini-xml-json-yaml-toml/