Syck 0.15 -- the road to YAML.rb 1.0

ruby-talk
1

Hi, ruby-talk. I concur with the subject of this message in bringing
Syck 0.15 to you. Syck is the new parser for YAML.rb. Coded in C.
Running at 30% of Marshal’s speed.

I’m still gluing the YAML.rb code and the Syck code together (which you
can see happening in this version), but expect a completed YAML.rb 0.60
this month with Syck parsing everything.

YAML.rb’s first birthday is in June. The goal is to hit 1.0 on the day.
See release notes below for more.

···

released: { name: Syck, version: 0.15 }
for: [ Ruby, PHP, Python ]
by: why the lucky stiff
about: >

Syck is a YAML parser, an extension for scripting
languages, written in C.

So what is YAML? YAML is a new language for data.
Describe objects in plain text. Load the data into
your scripting language as arrays, dictionaries,
classes, or primitives.

links:
YAML: http://www.yaml.org/
YAML Cookbook: http://yaml4r.sf.net/cookbook/
YAML Type Repository: http://yaml.org/type/
YAML Specification: http://yaml.org/spec/
Syck: http://www.whytheluckystiff.net/syck/
Syck Benchmarks: http://www.whytheluckystiff.net/arch/2003/03/19
Tarball @ SourceForge:
http://aleron.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/yaml4r/syck-0.15.tar.gz

status: >

Syck is about 60% compliant with the YAML spec. Most of
the remaining issues deal with whitespace. Syck also doesn’t
yet support any of the shortcut syntax optimizations from the
specification.

The extensions are quite usable, though. Ruby, PHP and Python
can load from a string containing YAML. Ruby also has support
for stream loading from any IO object.

benchmarks: >

Syck is quite speedy, although not as swift as most language’s
native serialization.

Syck runs at about:

30-35% of the speed of Ruby’s Marshal.
15-50% of the speed of PHP’s deserialize().
600% of the speed of Python’s Pickle.
33-40% of the speed of Python’s cPickle.

(Based on various types of structured data.)

installation: >

Syck contains working extensions for the Ruby, PHP, and Python
languages. Each requires compilation of the libsyck library,
followed by compilation of the extension.

To compile libsyck, first download libsyck.

tar xzvf syck-0.15.tar.gz
cd syck-0.15
./configure
make
sudo make install

To install the Ruby extension:

cd ext/ruby/ext
ruby extconf.rb
make
sudo make install

To install the Python extension:

cd ext/python
python setup.py build
sudo python setup.py install

To install the PHP extension:

sh make_module.sh
sudo make install (if you weren't root during make_module.sh)
php -q syck.php

examples: |

To load this document in Ruby:

 ($:~)$ irb

 >> require 'syck'

 => true

 >> yp = YAML::Syck::Parser.new( {} )

 => #<YAML::Syck::Parser:0x8058530>

 >> yp.load( File.open( 'syck-0.15.yml' ) )

 => {"status"=>"Syck is about 60% compliant ..."}

To load this document in PHP:

 ($:~)$ php -a
 Interactive mode enabled

 <? dl( 'syck.so' ); print_r( syck_load( implode( '', 
                     file( 'syck-0.15.yml' ) ) ) ); ?> 

 .. php then outputs ..

 X-Powered-By: PHP/4.2.3
 Content-type: text/html

 Array
 (
     [released] => Array
         (
             [name] => Syck
             [version] => 0.15
         )

 .. and so on ..

To load this document in Python:

 ($:~)$ python
 Python 2.1.3 (#1, Jul 11 2002, 17:52:24)
 [GCC 2.95.3 20010315 (release) [FreeBSD]] on freebsd4
 Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

 >>> import syck
 >>> f = open( 'syck-0.15.yml' )
 >>> syck.load( f.read() )

 {'by': 'why the lucky stiff', ... }