What is YAML?
YAML, pronounced yam·ull, is a data format that tries to be both easy for computers to parse and easy for human beings to read. Though officially "YAML" is a recursive acronym standing for "YAML Ain't Markup Language" many people believe it to actually stand for "Yet Another Markup Language". The reason for this strange dissociation is that YAML fulfills much of the potential and promise of XML, Extensible Markup Language, without pretending to be a markup language. In many ways, YAML is the inverse of JSON. Instead of trying to have a means of data serialization that is as nearly efficient as possible, YAML offers a means of data serialization that is nearly as human-readable as possible while still being easy for computers to parse.
last updated 2007.09.26
