139
TOML (lemmy.world)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/programmerhumor@lemmy.ml
30 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43529621

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 29 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Not-so-fun fact: if you're transferring a yaml or toml file and the transfer is incomplete, the receiving app may not even know! Yaml and toml both have a good chance of being apparently valid when cut off randomly. This doesn't impact JSON because of the enclosing {} or [].

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 39 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

    Counterpoints:

    • TOML is intended for configuration, not for data serialization, so you shouldn't be sending it over the wire in all too crazy ways anyways.
    • Most protocols will have a built-in way of knowing when the whole content has been transferred, typically by putting a content length into the header.
    • Having to wait until the closing } or ] can also be a disadvantage of JSON, since you cannot stream it, i.e. start processing the fields/elements before the whole thing has arrived. (You probably still don't want to use TOML for that, though. JSONL, CSV or such are a better idea.)
  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 child)

    I'm only being pedantic. Toml is not bad. Yaml I personally don't like because I don't approve of semantically required whitespace but I know I'm in the minority there.

    • It's not the norm in smaller companies, but big companies can use config servers where an app will retrieve its config on startup over the network. To be fair, I think they fall back to a platform specific encoding though.
    • Better hope it's built in. I don't remember the last time I verified a Content-Length was accurate. Also this generally applies to networking; disk writes don't get this same verification especially if a process is killed mid-write.
    • True point, no real notes. I've recently been dealing with streaming JSON for AI, it's SOO verbose for the few tokens that come across in each message. I don't know how gRPC wasn't chosen, or at least made an option, but oh well.

    You make good, valid points and I know I'm talking about edge cases that require the stars to align to break. It reminds me of an old, not-quite-relevant-but-oh-well saying "a 'one in a million' chance at 1GHz happens every millisecond." The law of large numbers isn't always on our side.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    Whitespace being part of semantics is always a bad design decision. You're not alone in this. I wish this was more widely accepted. But alas, it's not. For a configuration language I can accept it a bit more. But for a programming language it's a big faux pas in my opinion (looking at you python).

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent