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So, let’s presume you don’t use YAML because of its use of whitespace. You don’t like indentation describing data structures. For whatever reason: taste, upbringing, paranoia. Whatever. And we’ll presume you punch the sky as well. You don’t like the ether to have connotations.

Well, you can use YAML without whitespace. Using inline collections. Since the YAML 1.0 working draft, you can even use YAML inlines exclusively.

It looks just like JSON. In fact, I just realized that all JSON is valid YAML. Try it for yourself. (However, YAML doesn’t allow /* .. */ comments, so it does require some preprocessing.)

 require 'yaml'
 YAML::load %{
 {"menu": {
  "id": "file",
  "value": "File:",
  "popup": {
    "menuitem": [
      {"value": "New", "onclick": "CreateNewDoc()"},
      {"value": "Open", "onclick": "OpenDoc()"},
      {"value": "Close", "onclick": "CloseDoc()"}]}}}
 }

So, ethics question. Can I start to advertise Syck as a JSON parser now? That was the easiest feature I’ve ever added.