From: Intransition <transfire@...>
Date: 2010-09-22T06:53:48+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby-based data language



On Sep 21, 3:25 pm, Brian Candler <b.cand...@pobox.com> wrote:
> Thomas Sawyer wrote:
> >   name "Joe Foo"
> >   age 33
> >   contact do
> >     email "j...@joefoo.com"
> >     phione "555-555-1234"
> >   end
>
> You could make a parser for that fairly easily - or transform it to JSON
> or YAML and parse that (assuming that contact do .. end constructs a
> nested Hash)
>
> > Such a format would be to Ruby as JSON is to Javascript. And Ruby has a nice advantage with blocks.
>
> That's where I disagree with you. You are using blocks in a Builder or
> Markaby way, but that's not the fundamental purpose or interpretation of
> blocks in the language. And how would you handle Arrays?
>
> The Ruby equivalent of JSON would be a literal Hash:
>
> {
>   "name"=>"Joe Foo",
>   "age"=>33,
>   "contact"=>{
>     "email"=>"j...@joefoo.com",
>     "phone"=>"555-555-1234",
>   },
>
> }
>
> Or if you buy into 1.9 syntax, then you could have
>
> {
>   name: "Joe Foo",
>   age: 33,
>   contact: {
>     email: "j...@joefoo.com",
>     phone: "555-555-1234",
>   },
>
> }
>
> Both are similar enough to JSON that I'd use that instead, and gain the
> portability benefit. It's a shame that JSON doesn't allow trailing
> commas.

That's a good point. But if you look at Ruby-based configuration files
they always use block-based DSL notations, not hashes. So the analogy
isn't over the data structure, but rather the use of the underlying
language as a syntax model.