Question 1

What is the story behind YAML's name?

Accepted Answer

YAML was first proposed in 2001 by Clark Evans, Oren Ben-Kiki, and Ingy döt Net. It originally stood for "Yet Another Markup Language," but was later backronymed to "YAML Ain't Markup Language" to emphasize that it is data-oriented rather than document markup. The recursive acronym deliberately echoes GNU's "GNU's Not Unix" tradition.

Question 2

How are YAML anchors and aliases handled during conversion to JSON?

Accepted Answer

YAML anchors (defined with &name) and aliases (referenced with *name) are fully resolved before the JSON output is produced. This means the JSON contains the expanded values everywhere an alias was used — JSON has no equivalent of anchors, so each reference becomes a separate copy of the data. Merge keys (<<: *name) that combine multiple anchors into one mapping are also expanded.

Question 3

What YAML features are preserved when round-tripping through JSON?

Accepted Answer

JSON supports objects, arrays, strings, numbers, booleans, and null — so those survive perfectly. YAML-specific features like comments, multi-line block scalars (| and >), custom tags, anchors/aliases, and ordered mappings are lost during the YAML→JSON step because JSON has no way to represent them. Converting the JSON back to YAML will produce valid YAML but without the original formatting or comments.

YAML \u2194 JSON Converter

About this tool

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Tools