>> Ten years ago this would be --xml. Who knows what it would be ten years from now. Text streams are timeless
> Text streams are just an ad hoc structured format. Even an out of date format is better than one you have to invent or decode on a per case basis.
I won't argue which one sucks more, XML or JSON. They are both inferior to what you call "ad-hoc structured" text files.
XML and JSON are both hierarchical data models. It has been known for fourty years that these are inferior to the relational model because they make presumptions about the access paths of the consuming algorithms.
Put differently, hierarchical data models provide just a view of the information that is actually there. (Implicitly -- consistency and normalization are not enforced). Relational databases on the other hand are concerned with the information and provide much better mechanisms for enforcing consistency and normalization.
By coincidence, the "unstructured" text files in Unix are just miniature relational database tables. Think passwd, shadow, hosts, fstab, ... . Consistency is not technically enforced (that would be a huge overkill at this level of abstraction), but there are even checker programs like pwck.
A good standardized relational model format would be cool, and I'm sure such formats exist. Feels like we could do better than spitting out randomly (I.e per- tool) formatted data with so-so encoding support!
A sequence of tables in csv with decent encoding support would go a long way towards a good machine parseable relational text output.
It's really two separate discussions though: what is s good input/output format for Unix-like tools, and what makes a good format for a config file.
> It's really two separate discussions though: what is s good input/output format for Unix-like tools, and what makes a good format for a config file.
I don't see where these are not one single problem. Everything is a file.
> A good standardized relational model format would be cool, and I'm sure such formats exist. Feels like we could do better than spitting out randomly (I.e per- tool) formatted data with so-so encoding support!
I'm actually currently trying to realize such a thing in Haskell, for usage in low traffic websites. There are obvious advantages in text DBs compared to binary DBs, for example versioning.
But I doubt we can do better than current Unix text files if we don't want to lock in to some very specific technology.
> I don't see where these are not one single problem. Everything is a file.
A very general format could solve more problems but as I said earlier I think the lack of comments in json makes it sub par as a config format for human editing.
I generally like the idea of tabular text files where the last column is free form text.
If you need more commenting freedom or flexiblity, why not make another indirection and generate the data from some source which is tailored to your needs? After all, relational data is often not suited for manual input. It's meant for general consumption by computers.
For example, as a sysadmin, passwd / shadow / group is not enough to model my business objects directly. I keep my business data in a custom database, and generate the text files from that.
> Text streams are just an ad hoc structured format. Even an out of date format is better than one you have to invent or decode on a per case basis.
I won't argue which one sucks more, XML or JSON. They are both inferior to what you call "ad-hoc structured" text files.
XML and JSON are both hierarchical data models. It has been known for fourty years that these are inferior to the relational model because they make presumptions about the access paths of the consuming algorithms.
Put differently, hierarchical data models provide just a view of the information that is actually there. (Implicitly -- consistency and normalization are not enforced). Relational databases on the other hand are concerned with the information and provide much better mechanisms for enforcing consistency and normalization.
By coincidence, the "unstructured" text files in Unix are just miniature relational database tables. Think passwd, shadow, hosts, fstab, ... . Consistency is not technically enforced (that would be a huge overkill at this level of abstraction), but there are even checker programs like pwck.