Tom Lane wrote:
> Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> writes:
>> YAML...
>
> Hmm. So the argument for it is "let's make a machine-readable format
> more human-readable"? I'm not getting the point. People should look
> at the regular text output.
IMHO YAML beats the regular text format for human-readability -
at least for people with narrow terminal windows, and for novices.
Greg posted examples comparing regular-text vs yaml vs json here:
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2009-08/msg02090.php
I think it's more human-readable for novices since it explicitly
spells out what values refer to startup values vs totals.
I think it's more human-readable to me because the current text
format frequently wraps for me on even a modestly complex query,
and I find scrolling down easier than scrolling both ways.
None of the other machine-intended formats seem to suit
that purpose well because they're dominated by a lot of markup.
That said, though, it's not that big a deal.