On Friday 15 November 2002 08:47 am, tblanchard at mac.com wrote:
> I've had good luck with NextStep classic plist format over the
> wire. Its dead simple.
>
> Dictionary is { key = value; key2 = value2; }
> List is ( one, two, 3, "four or more\nsecond line", five )
> Strings are simple if they are just tokens (no whitespace or
> punctuation) or like C-style string literals otherwise.
>
> Combine elements in any combination.  Dead easy to write a parser
> too (I have one in java if anyone wants it).  Probably do one in
> Squeak pretty soon unless someone can point me to a better
> serialization format already there.

Actually, this is pretty close to YAML's compact notation:

dictionary: { key: value; key2: value2 }
list: [ one, two, 3, "four or more\nsecond line", five ]

The more verbose version is:

dictionary:
  key: value
  key2: value2
list:
  - one
  - two
  - 3
  - |
four or more
second line
  - five

The big advantage of YAML is that it handles arbitrary graphs of 
objects, including references between them.

-- 
Ned Konz
http://bike-nomad.com
GPG key ID: BEEA7EFE