SWI-Prolog YAML library
Jan Wielemaker 
VU University Amsterdam 
CWI, Amsterdam 
The Netherlands 
E-mail: 
J.Wielemaker@vu.nl 
Abstract
 This package reads and writes 
YAML documents from and to SWI-Prolog streams, files and strings. It is 
based on
libyaml. This 
C library is being used by several languages. Using this C library 
provides good performance, and interoperability with YALM infrastructure 
used by other systems.
 
This module parses YAML serialized data into a Prolog term with 
structure that is compatible with the JSON library. This library is a 
wrapper around the C library libyaml. This library forms 
the basis of the YAML support in several languages and thus guarantees 
compatibility of our YAML support with other languages.
- [det]yaml_read(+Input, 
-DOM)
 - Parse Input to a YAML DOM. The DOM 
representation uses the following mapping:
- A YAML sequence is mapped to a Prolog List.
 
- A YAML mapping is mapped to a Prolog dict.
 
- Untagged scalars follow the implicit tag rules defined by 
YAML, providing numbers (int, float and special floats),
null and the booleans true and false. 
Other untagged values are returned as a Prolog string. Tagged values are 
returned as tag(Tag, String) which is processed by
yalm_tagged/3. This internal predicate 
calls the user hook
yaml:tagged/3 with the same arguments and, 
if the hook fails, provides the following defaults:
!!binary converts the Base64 to a string of bytes. 
!!str explicitly keeps a string 
!!null translates "null" to null 
!!bool translates to true and false 
!!int translates to an integer 
!!float translates to a float 
- Anything else is returned as 
tag(Tag, String) 
 
| Input  | is one of (1) a stream, (2) a term string(Data) 
or (3) a file name.  | 
- bug
 - YAML defines that floats do not require a digit after the decimal dot. 
We use the Prolog parser which does require the decimal dot to be 
followed by at least one digit. Because the YAML spec intends to match 
JSON which does require a digit, we ignore this incompatibility, 
expecting it will be addressed in the next YAML version.
 
 
- [det]yaml_write(+Out:stream, 
+DOM)
 
- [det]yaml_write(+Out:stream, 
+DOM, +Options)
 - Emit a YAML DOM object as a serialized YAML document to the 
stream
Out. Options processed are:
- canonical(+Boolean)
 - Use canonical representation. Default is 
false. 
- unicode(+Boolean)
 - Use unicode Default is 
true. 
- implicit(+Boolean)
 - Use implicit or explicit representation. Currently only affects the 
opening and closing the document. Default is
true. Use false for embedded documents. 
- factorize(+Boolean)
 - If 
true, minimize the term by factoring out common 
structures and use &anchor and *anchor. 
Factorization is always used if DOM is a cyclic term. 
 
- [semidet,multifile]tagged(+Tag, 
?String, ?Value)
 - Hook that allows convering 
!!tag values to be decoded or 
encoded. 
- ?
 
- tagged/3
 
- yaml_read/2
 
- yaml_write/2
 
- yaml_write/3