You use invisible characters whenever you press Enter or Space. If you're referring to Tab, many of the most popular programming languages like Go and Python use them as part of their syntax.
The reason YAML was popularized is because it was a response to XML which isn't user friendly to write. It's unfortunate that the spec got so convoluted, and uses a lot of implicit behavior, but I'd rather write YAML than XML, JSON or TOML for things like configuration files. Nowadays there might be better alternatives, but YAML is the de facto standard.
It's also unfortunate that YAML got abused by people who wanted to turn it into a DSL, so we ended up with thousands of lines of Ansible playbooks, CI workflows, and Helm charts, but here we are.
The gyrations people will go through to avoid using S-expressions...
You use invisible characters whenever you press Enter or Space. If you're referring to Tab, many of the most popular programming languages like Go and Python use them as part of their syntax.
The reason YAML was popularized is because it was a response to XML which isn't user friendly to write. It's unfortunate that the spec got so convoluted, and uses a lot of implicit behavior, but I'd rather write YAML than XML, JSON or TOML for things like configuration files. Nowadays there might be better alternatives, but YAML is the de facto standard.
It's also unfortunate that YAML got abused by people who wanted to turn it into a DSL, so we ended up with thousands of lines of Ansible playbooks, CI workflows, and Helm charts, but here we are.
> many of the most popular programming languages like Go and Python use them as part of their syntax
Go doesn't use tabs or whitespace as a part of its syntax. It's a part of the formatting, but not the syntax of the language.
Python on the other hand, one extra tab or whitespace can cause havoc.
It's unfortunate, but inevitable. Every structured text data format that sees widespread use, given enough time, will eventually be turned into a DSL.
In fact, once a structured text format is used as a data source for any process, it has already become a DSL.
i always enjoy writting json more. I feel it's easier to translate/integrate json into the code.
YAML is a superset of JSON, so go right ahead and write your .yml files in JSON.
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Exactly how I feel about Python!