XML Considered Harmful

[Chris Angelico]

On Sat, Sep 25, 2021 at 8:53 AM dn via Python-list
<python-list at python.org> wrote:
>
> 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?

Invented because there weren't enough markup languages, so we needed another?

ChrisA