Working with YAML

YAML is a very easy language to work with. It is very easy for humans to read, and in most cases, it is easy for computers to parse. However, there are little things inside YAML that can cause pain to even the most experienced users.

YAML basics

Before we get into troubleshooting YAML, let's go over the basic functionality that you are likely to use in Salt.

YAML is based on a key/value model that is very common in a number of programming languages. In Perl and Ruby it's called a hash, in Python it's called a dictionary (or dict, for short), and in other languages it has other names. Because Salt is written in Python, we'll henceforth refer to it as a dict.

dict

A dict is a set of keys, each of which has a value. This value may be a number of things, including a string, a number, a list (or array), another dict, and so on. The following is a very basic dict, in YAML format:

larry: cheesecake 
shemp: chocolate cake 
moe: apple pie 

The order of the items in...