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Comment by azaras | Hacker News Reader

But it is because you do not use a yaml serializer.

If you use a template you have to put "" for strings.

If your human-writable format requires a serializer to avoid unexpected types, it's not human-writable. If your human-readable format requires special cases for certain keywords but treats others as strings, it's not human-readable.

> If your human-writable format requires a serializer to avoid unexpected types, it's not human-writable.

That sounds like there are no human-writable formats.

> If your human-readable format requires special cases for certain keywords but treats others as strings, it's not human-readable.

That I can 100% support; sometimes needing to quote strings is a recipe for disaster.

> That sounds like there are no human-writable formats.

I'm not sure why it sounds that way. There are formats where types are explicit, either by stating them or by their delimiters or by their contents.

I have been using yaml for years (mostly as a user, not as a dev) and I’ve never heard anyone mention a yaml serializer. Is this common practice? Wouldnt the yaml serializer have the same locality issues, or is it more strict?

A serialiser is just a program/library that takes a data structure and emits YAML. GP criticises GGP for putting the value no manually into the file and thus causing a bug instead of letting a piece of specialised software deal with the correct form (here: quoted string).

No, it is because that part of yaml spec is plain dumb.

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