YAML: How can I create a multi-line string of comma delimited values?

Question

I am using YAML to pass in a string of comma delimited values for a new relic config file to ignore errors. I need the output to look like this:

"NotFoundError,LocationError,InvalidParamsError"

I tried using folded style and stripping the last newline. My yaml file looks like this:

ignore_errors: >-
  NotFoundError,
  LocationError,
  InvalidParamsError

However, it parses the other newlines as a space in the end giving me something like this:

"NotFoundError, LocationError, InvalidParamsError"

I need it to parse the folded string and not add spaces. Please help.

Did you find a solution? – Paul Fioravanti Jul 07 '16 at 00:01 — Paul Fioravanti, Jul 07 '16 at 00:01

score 7 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 28 '20 at 14:24

7

The only way to do this is to quote your string and escape the end of each line with \:

ignore_errors: "\
  NotFoundError,\
  LocationError,\
  InvalidParamsError"

answered Apr 28 '20 at 14:24

TomDotTom

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score 3 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:44

I don't think the YAML spec will enable you to do what you want, unfortunately (this great SO answer shows the myriad of ways to write multi-line strings in YAML... but doesn't cover your use case). I think your best bet if possible would be to store your error strings as a list, and then use your programming language to format the list. An example in Ruby would be:

require 'yaml'

yaml = <<-YAML
  ignore_errors:
    - NotFoundError
    - LocationError
    - InvalidParamsError
YAML
hash = YAML.load(yaml)
puts hash["ignore_errors"].join(',')

which gives you "NotFoundError,LocationError,InvalidParamsError"

YAML: How can I create a multi-line string of comma delimited values?

2 Answers2