CBOR (Was: My experiences with Rust)

On Fri, 22 Aug 2025 17:52:48 -0400
"Isaac (.ike) Levy" <ike@blackskyresearch.net> wrote:

> > On Aug 22, 2025, at 5:29 PM, Vadim Goncharov <vadimnuclight@gmail.com>
> > wrote: 
> ..
> > And nobody needs to open "format" *directly* in text editor - as CBOR is
> > seamlessly converted to/from text-form EDN (extended diagnostic notation, a
> > superset of JSON), that sounds like a requirement to open ELF binary
> > directly in text editor instead of just putting (dis)assembler into
> > pipeline.  
> 
> This goes against the principles that have made UNIX systems successful
> since 1969, (and follows path with many systems which came and went).

No. See my message to phk@

> "Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal
> interface." Thompson, McEllroy, Salus, etc.

That was true in 1970-80-s as a particular instance of more generic "to handle
universal structured formats", because only text was available to build such
at that times.

> Love it or hate it, but it's a guarantee some user will be trying to
> debug/manage the interface output here many years after any of us in this
> thread have stopped touching it, when CBOR feels as antiquated as XML.  Big
> difference: anyone can read the XML and figure out what the heck it is by
> looking at it using common tools.

CBOR exists for more than decade and designed to exist for decades more.
There's already many tools and language implementations available,
see http://cbor.io and e.g. cbor2diag.rb (see again my message to phk@) will
give that user much better experience than XML.

-- 
WBR, @nuclight