Re: [Yaml-core] Explicit Transfer Syntax

[Clark C . E. <cc...@cl...>]

| | OK. Stop. I am troubled by our serialization of objects.
| | In Python and Java, everything is an object. Right?

As I recall, in Python and Java, a variable is either 
a type or a class but not both.

| | In Perl, an object is any data structure that is "blessed". That simply
| | means that a string is attached to it. The string can be thought of as a
| | class name.

Right.   It is both a type and a class.  How about
the following rule:

  1.  If the type is a hashtable, then only the
      class name is used ("bless string")

  2.  For all other types that are blessed, a
      composite structure is used, where the
      outer structure is a mapping having
      the blessed string for a class, and the
      inner structure is typed appropriately.

      Thus, an integer value that is blessed "hi"
      would look like...

      value: !perl|hi 
       =: 23
  
      In this way, both the type and the
      class name are preserved.

| | perl -MYAML -e 'print Store bless [], "Foo"'
| | 
| | either won't work or is indistinguishable from:
| | 
| | perl -MYAML -e 'print Store bless {}, "Foo"'

If you used the above strategy...

first: !perl|Foo 
 =: []

second: !perl|Foo 
 =: {}

Now, since we've decided to allow for collapsing
of mappings, I think these could be re-written as...
if this re-write doesn't work; perhaps this is
a big enough use case to allow for it.

first:  !perl|Foo =: []
second: !perl|Foo =: {}

Does this do it for you?   I'd rather not
introduce a new construct, beacuse then
it won't match Java/Python, etc.  -- but
then again, we are going to face some
inter-language problems, no?

Best,

Clark

P.S.  I guess the short-hand is useful
for stuff like pointers as well...

hard-reference: &001 !ptr =: *001