A quick reference to basic YAML syntax

Lists

All members of a list are lines beginning at the same indentation level starting with a “- ” (a dash and a space)

# a list of models
- logreg
- randomforest
- xgboost
- mlp

Dictionary

key: value (colon followed by a space)

rohan:
  name: Rohan Singh
  job: Data Scientist III
  skill: Elite

Complicated Data Structures

# a list of dictionaries
- rohan:
      name: Rohan Singh
      job: Geneticist
      skill: Beginner

- emmanuelle:
      name: Emmanuelle Charpentier
      job: Professor and Researcher
      skill: Elite

Flow Connections

It can be used to represent abbreviated data structures

rohan: {name: Rohan Singh, job: Data Scientist III, skill: Elite}

Boolean

Use lower case true/false for compatible yamllint

for using literal “yes/no/true/false”: use quotes

Multiline Values

You can multiline values in two ways

Literal Block Scalar |

It will include the newlines and any trailing spaces

as_is: |
    these lines will
    be shown as is in
    the value

Folded Block Scalar >

It will fold newlines to spaces – use this for readability of longer lines to be used as values

one_line: >
    the value of
    this one_line will not
    have newlines

Alternatively, you can use newline \n character

convert_some_newlines_using_fold: >
    def hi():
        print('hello')

convert_some_newlines: "def hi():\n    print('hello')"

Gotchas

: It is an indicator for mapping
# Starts a comment

# this will fail
wrong: who is: sherlock

# this will work
the_c_drive: c:\c_drive

You can get around the gotchas by using ' or " quotes

But , hold on – the quotes are not the same!

In double quotes you can escapes

escaped: "from an island called ..... \t Alcatraz \n near \t San Francisco"