YAML Flow and Block Styles
Flow (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.
# Flow style (JSON-like) and block style mean the same thing, but tooling rarely round-trips
# between them faithfully. Flow collections may also nest inside block ones and vice versa.
block_map:
a: 1
b: 2
flow_map: {a: 1, b: 2}
block_seq:
- one
- two
flow_seq: [one, two, three]
flow_in_block:
matrix: {os: [linux, windows], arch: [amd64, arm64]}
needs: []
block_in_flow: [{name: build, needs: []}, {name: test, needs: [build]}]
mixed_sequence:
- {name: build, parallel: false}
- name: test
parallel: true
needs: [build]
deeply_nested_flow: {a: {b: {c: [1, 2, {d: [e, f]}]}}}
flow_across_lines: {
name: wrapped,
values: [
1,
2
]
}
json_is_valid_yaml: {"quoted": "keys", "work": ["too", 1, true, null]}
Specifications
- Flow Collections
- 8
- Block Collections
- 4
- Mixed Nesting
- 3
- Json Subset Example
- true
- Max Flow Depth
- 5
Testing contract
Expected to pass- Scenario
- Load equivalent structures written in flow and block style and compare them
- Expected result
- block_map and flow_map load to equal mappings, and the strict-JSON line parses as YAML without a separate JSON parser
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 Flow and Block Styles” 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 · 750 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("flow-and-block-styles.yaml") as f:
data = yaml.safe_load(f)
print(data)Related files
- yamlYAML Anchors and AliasesAnchors and aliases across mapping, sequence and scalar nodes, including an anchor nested inside another anchored node. The point most tooling misses: an alias is a reference to the same node, so a shallow-loading parser can share mutable state between jobs.
- yamlYAML Block Scalars and Chomping IndicatorsEvery 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.
- yamlYAML Bounded Anchor ReuseNested anchor reuse kept deliberately small: two anchors, six references, thirty-one expanded nodes. It is here to test alias resolution and expansion accounting on a safe input, and is explicitly not a billion-laughs expansion bomb.
- yamlYAML Directives and CommentsA two-document stream where each document declares its own %YAML directive and the second adds a %TAG handle used by a local tag. Comments appear in every position they are legal, and every one of them is lost by a non-round-tripping loader.
- 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.
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