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Sanity checking an idea for editing yaml without wanting to throw my laptop out the window (lemm.ee)

submitted 7 months ago by flashgnash@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Often find myself getting frustrated editing yaml, and it seems to be used everywhere for some reason I cannot fathom

I have an idea to write an editor plugin that will, when opening a yaml file, convert it to json (or some other less painful configuration language), then convert back on save. I don't know enough about yaml syntax to know if that's possible or if there's some quirk that makes them not completely cross compatible

Or alternatively if it exists a better CLI tool for editing yaml than just a normal text editor because I'm getting sick of pasting in a block of yaml and then having to fix the 8 indentation errors that somehow spawn from that

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[–] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 16 points 7 months ago (1 children)

What text editor are you using? In theory most should detect a yaml file and adjust their indentation behaviour appropriately. I edit yaml in VSCode and Kate and it's never been a problem.

[–] flashgnash@lemm.ee 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I use nvim for it, it works but I'd rather not have to deal with indentation in the first place

[–] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Well in that case, I have good news. All valid JSON is also valid yaml. It's a superset by definition. So if you really hate yaml so much you can just write your yaml files as JSON and the parser should handle it fine. Just be aware that yaml does some more agressive typecasting when quotes are omitted, so you may need to figure out which value is actually being used when converting.

[–] flashgnash@lemm.ee 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Seriously? Chatgpt told me that once and I thought it was just hallucinating

Problem is it's for configuration of other services I didn't write, I would just use JSON in the first place if I were defining the schema

[–] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You should try looking up the language spec rather than hoping a text generator will generate truthful results. What's even the point of asking for answers if you don't trust that the thing you're asking won't just bullshit you?

[–] flashgnash@lemm.ee 2 points 7 months ago

Can usually tell when it's obviously bullshitting me and verify it if it's not. You can often get it to correct itself if you call it out

(This was the first time I've seen it incorrectly "corrected" itsself)

I think I did a quick search but it seemed so strange to me I just wrote it off straight away