> When config files were written not to be easy to parse, but to make it easier for human beings to configure software
Config files have always been a variant of key-value or section-key-value, except that we used to have ad hoc (and probably buggy, inconsistent, incomplete or all three) rules for quoting; array items separated by a mix of spaces, commas or something else; comments (semicolon, percent, sharp) different for each program. Case sensitivity was also a crap shoot, sometimes different between keys and values.
These days TOML (which more or less just works) just works. I have mixed feelings about YAML but certainly I would not swap it with endless variants of sendmail's m4 madness.
Config files have always been a variant of key-value or section-key-value, except that we used to have ad hoc (and probably buggy, inconsistent, incomplete or all three) rules for quoting; array items separated by a mix of spaces, commas or something else; comments (semicolon, percent, sharp) different for each program. Case sensitivity was also a crap shoot, sometimes different between keys and values.
These days TOML (which more or less just works) just works. I have mixed feelings about YAML but certainly I would not swap it with endless variants of sendmail's m4 madness.