Sanity checking an idea for editing yaml without wanting to throw my laptop out the window

flashgnash@lemm.ee to Technology@lemmy.world – 27 points –

Often find myself getting frustrated editing yaml, and it seems to be used everywhere for some reason I cannot fathom

I have an idea to write an editor plugin that will, when opening a yaml file, convert it to json (or some other less painful configuration language), then convert back on save. I don't know enough about yaml syntax to know if that's possible or if there's some quirk that makes them not completely cross compatible

Or alternatively if it exists a better CLI tool for editing yaml than just a normal text editor because I'm getting sick of pasting in a block of yaml and then having to fix the 8 indentation errors that somehow spawn from that

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I could see some problems when working with yaml anchors, otherwise the conversion should work fine. But yeah, using a good editor should fix most problems and would be much easier

What kind of problems? I'm unfamiliar with anchors in yaml

They are basically constants where you can define reoccurring sections once and reference them multiple times throughout the file. A processor will then resolve these. As gar as I know, there is no comparable concept in JSON so they could get lost in translation