YAML is a very interesting and compact markup language. But one that is not based on XML or SGML; rather, it is principally oriented toward the old RFC mail formats. The genius of it: the contents are much easier for humans to read than all those angle-bracket dialects. And for the computer, the whole thing is also quite simple to parse - and it's still powerful in its expressive capabilities. If you feel like processing YAML files with Python, Syck is an extremely fast library that also offers an interface for Python. In the Active Storage Framework for Python I use YAML for database backup and restore and as a native data format. Importing YAML data into the database is thus very easy - and since YAML is hierarchical data and the Active Storage Framework for Python is a hierarchical database, everything fits together wonderfully. And you don't have to be afraid of hurting yourself on all those angle brackets.