Preserve a YAML 'literal block' (using |), or a 'folded block' (using '>') about yq HOT 6 CLOSED

Thanks for reporting - unfortunately this is tricky since after round-tripping through JSON, there is no metadata on what kind of block the original text was. We could probably configure PyYAML to write all multiline strings as literal blocks or folded blocks, but I'm not sure if that's always the best thing to do, or what else to do to improve this.

from yq.

I see two issues:

1. Added newlines between the 3 lines in the example, completely breaking/altering the value
2. yq should preserve the type, and not replace a literal block or folded block with a quoted multiline string.

Both should be fixed imho but I guess the first one is easier.. ?

Is there any corresponding issue at the PyYAML that would help yq with this ?

from yq.

The first observation that you make is not an issue. The two constructs in the description are equivalent in YAML. See the YAML spec and https://yaml-multiline.info/ for a thorough explanation of this.

As I mentioned in my previous comment, there is no metadata preserved in JSON on what kind of block the original string was. As such there is no obvious way to solve the second issue that you mention under the design constraints of yq.

from yq.

Awesome, thx !!

from yq.

Is this the desired behaviour ?

This looks pretty well:

❯ cat y
some:
  file: |
    hello world
    line1
    line2

❯ yq -Y . < y
some:
  file: |
    hello world
    line1
    line2

❯ yq -Y .some < y
file: |
  hello world
  line1
  line2

But when I query the exact key, the literal block is not presered anymore:

❯ yq -Y .some.file < y
'hello world

  line1

  line2

  '

from yq.

Yes. You don't need -Y when all you're doing is extracting the leaf node.

from yq.