XML Considered Harmful

[dn]

On 25/09/2021 06.59, Peter J. Holzer wrote:
> There are a gazillion formats and depending on your needs one of them
> might be perfect. Or you may have to define you own bespoke format (I
> mean, nobody (except Matt Parker) tries to represent images or videos as
> CSVs: There's PNG and JPEG and WEBP and H.264 and AV1 and whatever for
> that).
> 
> Of the three formats discussed here my take is:
> 
> CSV: Good for tabular data of a single data type (strings). As soon as
> there's a second data type (numbers, dates, ...) you leave standard
> territory and are into "private agreements".
> 
> JSON: Has a few primitive data types (bool, number, string) and a two
> compound types (list, dict(string -> any)). Still missing many
> frequently used data types (e.g. dates) and has no standard way to
> denote composite types. But its simple and if it's sufficient for your
> needs, use it.
> 
> XML: Originally invented for text markup, and that shows. Can represent
> different types (via tags), can define those types (via DTD and/or
> schemas), can identify schemas in a globally-unique way and you can mix
> them all in a single document (and there are tools available to validate
> your files). But those features make it very complex (you almost
> certainly don't want to write your own parser) and you really have to
> understand the data model (especiall namespaces) to use it.

and YAML?
-- 
Regards,
=dn