Re: : in the flow context for PyYAML and SnakeYAML

Kirill Simonov wrote:
> Hi William,
> 
> If you take a look at the function yaml_parser_scan_plain_scalar, lines 
> 3424-3433, you'll see:
> 
> /* Check for 'x:x' in the flow context. TODO: Fix the test "spec-08-13". */
> 
> if (parser->flow_level
>         && CHECK(parser->buffer, ':')
>         && !IS_BLANKZ_AT(parser->buffer, 1)) {
>     yaml_parser_set_scanner_error(parser, "while scanning a plain scalar",
>             start_mark, "found unexpected ':'");
>     goto error;
> }
> 
> This condition is only checked in the flow context and it produces an 
> error if there is a colon followed by a non-whitespace character. 

You are right, my compiled version has that line commented out, as I had 
to fix it to read some JSON text. My personal opinion is that this MUST 
be changed. I had to fix it to read JSON output and I can't be the only 
one. There are VAST amounts of "unquoted" JSON out there, probably the 
majority! If YAML has any intention of being JSON-compatible it must fix 
this.

I have unfortunatly drifted away from YAML. I am using my patched 
version of the parser, but am not using any code for emitting it. 
Instead I wrote a much faster one which outputs YAML with "flow" turned 
on all the time, and with the ability to put newlines between the "flow" 
items. I quote everything containing any characters other than 
alphanumeric, period, underscore, +, or -.

I am increasingly of the belief that a correct format would be more like 
JSON with optional quoting, with the addition of "type" and the addition 
of cross-references. Currently I am persuing this, though I am following 
the YAML discussion in case something interesting comes up.


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