[Oisf-wg-configuration_language] YAML issues.

[Victor Julien]

Frank Knobbe wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-08-20 at 09:59 -0700, Jason Ish wrote:
>> So while doing some work with YAML we ran into a few issues that I'd
>> like to bring up here.
> [...]
>> The issue here is that "!" can't be used outside quotes in YAML as it
>> has special meaning.  The ":" character also has special meaning.  So
>> if we want Snort like variable definitions, we need to quote
>> everything.  For example:
>>
>> vars:
>>   HOME_NET: "172.16.1.0/24"
>>   EXTERNAL_NET: "!$HOME_NET"
> 
> 
> I can see that leading to a lot of configuration errors and
> head-scratching. Maybe YAML is not the best option after all?
> 
> Writing a parser is not hard. Why not roll your own, YAML-like?
> 
> (I personally prefer to roll my own parser. Avoids sucking in all those
> bugs of existing parsing libs. And I can tailor it to my needs.)

An advantage of YAML would be many many language bindings for ppl
writing frontends/management tools. I'm not voting for ditching YAML
just for the reason of disliking of a set of quotes in rule vars. That
sounds like something thats easy enough to get used to.

Cheers,
Victor

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Victor Julien
http://www.inliniac.net/
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