TOML – Tom's Obvious, Minimal Language

Post by jiggawatts » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 2:19 PM UTC

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #124

jiggawatts wrote: post #4

TOML superficially looks clean, but it has many of the same problems other similar languages have. Such file formats are typically used for configuration files. Yet, a substantial amount of effort was expended on data types not commonly seen in configuration files, such as a date-time-offset. Meanwhile, much more common data types typically used in configuration files is missing, such as GUIDs, IP Addresses, and byte…

That's not config data that you have here, that's your program input (hint: you pipe it to stdin). TOML is for config, config that users edit by hand, not input.

Post by jiggawatts » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 2:26 PM UTC

3np wrote: post #122

jiggawatts wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What configuration format does meet your approval? None at the moment. My problem with all of them is that I can't scan them visually to spot typos or mistakes. They break the content up and move related data too far apart for the inconsistencies to be immediately apparent. Don't laugh, but in the absence of better options, I prefer to use Excel. With tabular data, things that belong together are visually adjacent.…

It sounds like you should store your configuration in some sort of KVS (Consul or etcd) or database (SQL) with a frontend rather than flat text files. There exists tooling for all of that. If you're really going for Excel, why not even make a plugin that hooks in to it. Personally I'd find that horrible, but if it works for you and your team has no objections, why not. I'd wager that the major reason no one has taken…

Post by GoblinSlayer » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 2:39 PM UTC

hoseja wrote: post #91

shean_massey wrote: post #83

I had tons of headaches trying to get toml to do what's trivial in Json (nested arrays of objects of arrays of ... etc). 1/10 would not try again. For very simple, hear "flat" config it checks out. But then, so does yaml or even ini files. Anything requiring composite types was just a nightmare. I'd even prefer xlm before using toml again.

I never had to work with it seriously but I still don't get why people hate XML so much.

Post by m463 » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 2:50 PM UTC

jiggawatts wrote: post #4

TOML superficially looks clean, but it has many of the same problems other similar languages have. Such file formats are typically used for configuration files. Yet, a substantial amount of effort was expended on data types not commonly seen in configuration files, such as a date-time-offset. Meanwhile, much more common data types typically used in configuration files is missing, such as GUIDs, IP Addresses, and byte…

  opt="
  # this is the foo option
  a=1

  # define the bar
  #BAR=ON
  #BAR=OFF
  BAR=MAYBE

  " | egrep -v '^#|^$' | sed 's/^/-D/'

  progs="
  one two three
  #four five siz
  seven ate tree
  " | egrep -v '^#|^$' | while read o1 o2 o3
  do 
    program $o1 $o2 $o3
  done

Post by m463 » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 2:54 PM UTC

darthrupert wrote: post #113

fbnlsr wrote: post #106

I discovered TOML a couple of years ago when I started playing with Hugo, as it was Hugo's format of choice for configuration files. I honestly find TOML harder to read and more complicated to use than YAML. I tried to look into it but frankly I still haven't found a use case where it made more sense to use TOML.

Interesting how differently competent people can perceive things. To me, YAML is a cruel joke, and I carry suspicions about the competence of anyone who opts to use it out of all possible options. I think I've even grown to like XML configuration over it.