YAML Block Scalars and Chomping Indicators
Every block-scalar variation in one file: literal and folded styles, all three chomping indicators, an explicit indentation indicator, a folded block with a paragraph break, and an embedded shell-shaped script whose own indentation must survive.
# Block scalars: the literal style (|) keeps newlines, the folded style (>) turns single
# newlines into spaces but keeps blank lines as paragraph breaks. The chomping indicator
# controls the trailing newline: default clips to exactly one, - strips it, + keeps them all.
# The explicit indentation indicator (|2) fixes the content indent so extra leading spaces
# become part of the content instead of being stripped.
literal_clip: |
line one
line two
literal_strip: |-
no trailing newline at all
folded_clip: >
this is one long logical line that the folded style
joins together with single spaces
and this is a second paragraph, because the blank line survives
folded_strip: >-
folded and stripped, so the value ends
immediately after this word
indentation_indicator: |2
this content indent is fixed at two spaces
so every line here keeps one extra leading space
script_block: |
set -eu
for stage in build test deploy; do
echo "stage: $stage"
done
literal_keep: |+
trailing blank lines below are part of this value
after_keep: sentinel key proving the keep block ended
Specifications
- Literal Blocks
- 4
- Folded Blocks
- 2
- Chomping Indicators
- clip, strip, keep
- Has Indentation Indicator
- true
- Keep Block Trailing Newlines
- 3
Testing contract
Expected to pass- Scenario
- Load block scalars and check the exact trailing whitespace each chomping indicator produces
- Expected result
- literal_clip ends with exactly one newline, literal_strip with none, and literal_keep retains all its trailing blank lines
What is a .yaml file?
YAML (YAML Ain't Markup Language) is a human-readable data-serialization format using indentation, key-value pairs, and lists, and is a superset of JSON. It supports comments, anchors, and multiple documents per file, favoring readability for configuration. Its indentation sensitivity makes it error-prone to hand-edit.
How to use this file
Use an example YAML file to test config parsers, indentation and anchor handling, multi-document streams, and safe-loading to avoid arbitrary object construction.
How to use this file for testing
“YAML Block Scalars and Chomping Indicators” is a deterministic Novus Examples fixture for Config parsing, Encoding detection, Editor testing. TOML and INI configuration files with nested sections and typed values — for testing config parsers and loaders.
Documented properties for this file: YAML · 1,114 bytes. Compare results against paired or grouped companions on this page when present (clean↔damaged, searchable↔scanned, or format twins) so scores stay reproducible across runs.
Download the file once, keep the path stable in CI or local scripts, and treat the spec table as the contract: dimensions, seeds, field lists, and roles are intentional. Corrupt or invalid samples are labelled as such — expect parsers to fail loudly rather than silently accept them.
Pipeline and infrastructure fixtures are inert configuration: steps reference fictional images and scripts, and nothing here executes. Run your linter, schema validator, migrator, or policy engine against them, and expect the deprecated-syntax and intentionally invalid variants to be rejected.
Point your config loader at the file and assert it reads the documented sections and typed values, including any deliberately-tricky nesting or comments.
Code examples
import yaml # pip install pyyaml
with open("block-scalars.yaml") as f:
data = yaml.safe_load(f)
print(data)Related files
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- yamlYAML Duplicate KeysDuplicate keys at three nesting levels, including a duplicated top-level sequence. The spec forbids them; most loaders keep the last silently, a few keep the first, and strict linters reject the document. The file publishes the last-wins answer.

- yamlYAML Explicit and Local TagsExplicit tags across the standard set — !!str, !!float, !!int, !!bool, !!null, !!binary, !!timestamp, !!omap, !!set — alongside two application-local ! tags. CI dialects use local tags in the wild, so a pipeline parser has to decide whether to reject, ignore, or resolve them.

- yamlYAML Flow and Block StylesFlow (JSON-like) and block collections expressing the same structures, nested inside one another in both directions, plus a flow mapping wrapped across lines and a line of strict JSON — which is valid YAML, and a useful check on a parser's JSON-subset claim.

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