YAML COMMAND

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YAML Command is a command line tool for working with YAML files.

While currently a work in progress, the goal is evolve the design for a standardized yaml command line tool. While this early implementation is written in Ruby, ultimately the final version would be written in C and be widely available.

IMPORTANT NOTE! YPath is not yet implemented so only simple name references can be used at this point.

Commands are invoked on the command line with:

$ yaml <command> [options...] [arguments...]

The following commands are currently supported:

• get
  The get command simply extracts a portion of a YAML file and outputs it to stdout.

• set
  The set command is the opposite of get in that it lets you change a portion of a YAML file. By default the changed YAML document will go to stdout, using the -s/--save option rewrites the file with the change.

• sort
  The sort command can be used to sort portions of a YAML document.

• slurp
  The slurp command takes a directory and converts it's contents into a YAML file.

• splat
  The splat command takes a YAML file and converts it into a file directory structure. It is essentially the opposite of slurp.

• edit
  Edit will open a YAML file for editing in the default editor (as defined by $EDITOR), and allow you to edit it.

  If instead you edit a directory, then the directory will be automatically slurped into a temporary file. After editing the temporary file will be splatted back out to update the directory and it's files.

• view
  Outputs a colorized rendering of the YAML file.

Some commands has special options. Use yaml <command> --help to learn about those. All (or nearly all) commands support the following options.

• -F / --file [PATH]
  Use the given YAML file instead of using stdin.

• -y / --yaml
  Output results in YAML format.

• -j / --json
  Output results in JSON format.

• -m / --mute
  Suppress all output.

• -f / --force
  Used to force overwrites when necessary.

• --debug
  Turn on debug mode to get detailed error report if there is a problem.

The yaml command is a Ruby script, so you will need a Ruby interpreter installed on your system. There are a few of these now, such as Rubinius, JRuby and the original MRI. The latter is the typical choice, and usually can be installed via your operating system's package manager. For example, on dpkg-based systems like Ubuntu, you can type in a shell console:

$ apt-get install ruby

With Ruby installed, the easiest way to install a Ruby library is via RubyGems. To install YAML Command just type:

$ gem install yaml_command

YAML Command requires the following other packages be installed:

• Executable library handle CLI parsing.
• ANSI library provides console colorization.

If you are using RubyGems these will be install automatically.

Copyright (c) 2011 Rubyworks. All rights reserved.

YAML Command may be distributed in accordance with the BSD-2-Clause license.

See the LICENSE.txt file for details.