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FAMF: Files As Metadata Format
  • Sure thing! Awesome!

  • FAMF: Files As Metadata Format
  • OK so, for example if you have to change the structure of the configuration file, in a statically typed language. You have to have two representation of the data, the old one, and the new one.You have to first deserialize the data, in the old format, then convert it back to the new format, then replace the old files. The FAMF alternative, allows you just to easily use copy and paste and delete to achieve the same goal. Please keep in mind that you can just make configuration data structure that you can keep in-memory. It is just that the representation of the persisted information is spread between different files and not just one file.

  • FAMF: Files As Metadata Format
  • OK so, you are very much right. You should definitely benchmark it using a simulation of what your data might look like. It should not be that hard. Just make script, that creates bunch of files similar to your data. About the trailing white space, when I am in terminal I just use sed to remove the latest '\n' and in rust I just use .trim(), in go I think there is strings.trim(). It is honestly not that hard. The data structure and parser is not formed the same way as the json, where you have to parse the whole thing. So you don't have to. You just open the files you need read their content. It is a bit more difficult at first since you can't just translate a whole struct directly, but it pays for itself when you want to migrate the data to a new format. So if your structure never changes, probably those formats are easier.

  • FAMF: Files As Metadata Format
  • You are right. Fat32 is not recommended for implementing FAMF.

  • FAMF: Files As Metadata Format
  • Oh goody! F2 is great, but the developers are craaazy! They packages commandline Go application with npm!

    I also like vimv and vidir for simpler stuff.

  • FAMF: Files As Metadata Format
  • Sure. You should use whatever you are comfortable with. That's the point. When you don't need special parsers or tools, you can more easily adopt your tooling for the job, because almost every language has tools to deal with files. ( I assume there is some language that doesn't, who knows?)

  • FAMF: Files As Metadata Format
  • Definitely. But you would need need something other than those for the working with 100 json files as well. The question is, which kinds of things you would like to have as extra. You can go with jq and prettier syntax highlighting or you can go with tree and cat (and dog). It is the matter of taste. But also, I am always right, because my mom told me I am special .

  • FAMF: Files As Metadata Format
  • I know! right?

    Some say thay since you can use 'tree' and things like ranger to navigate the files, it should work alright. But I guess if you have one giant metadatafile for all the posts on your blog, it should be much easier to see the whole picture.

    As for upd_at, it does not contain information about when the files have been edited, but when the content of the post was meaningfully edited.

    So if for example I change the formatting of my times form ISO3339 to another standard, it changes the file metadata, but it does not update the post content, as far as the readers of the blog are concerned with. But I get why you chuckled.

  • FAMF: Files As Metadata Format
  • That's a pretty cool idea!

  • FAMF: Files As Metadata Format
  • Read the content. I address that issue.

  • FAMF: Files As Metadata Format
  • Well I'd you have so many data entry, yaml and toml are not that helpful either. They would present different sets of problems. You should use a database (perhaps sqlite) for that purpose.

  • FAMF: Files As Metadata Format
  • Well, I mostly target the places where you don't programmatically generate millions of values. Configurations, entry metadata, etc. Indeed SQLite is much better for when you have a massive amount of data, and you need a better base that a file system. But when that is not the case, a file system is more advanced than whatever tooling are behind toml and yaml.

  • FAMF: Files As Metadata Format
  • Yes. That is indeed a more interesting name. But think of the acronym.

    • FDS is not as easy to say FAMF.
    • FAMF already has an Urban Dictionary entry.
  • FAMF: Files As Metadata Format
  • /key/=/value

  • FAMF: Files As Metadata Format
  • I have one that has 69 (noice) files changed.

  • FAMF: Files As Metadata Format
  • Famf is definitely is. Just put yaml there.

  • FAMF: Files As Metadata Format
  • Sure. Why not :))

  • FAMF: Files As Metadata Format
  • What would you do with billions of inodes?

  • Users of Vim and similars, what exactly makes it useful compared to other text editors? How much time do you suppose you save when working with it?
  • I don't think I like vim or similar for the "productivity gain". It just feels much more smooth of an experience when I don't have to target, point at something visually and click all the time. Or move my hand to a 4 keys that are as far from my hands resting position as possible. I don't believe I have saved much time. But I had a blast working with it and want to continue this serendipity experience for the rest of my time.

  • FAMF: Files As Metadata Format
    prma.dev PRMA::Files As Metadata Format

    File structures with simple contents can be used instead of YAML, TOML or JSON. More effectively!

    PRMA::Files As Metadata Format

    YAML and TOML suck. Long live the FAMF!

    43
    Struggling with learning testing
  • So, I had the same sort of struggle a while back. And I have managed to fix it, recognizing what I had been doing wrong.

    1. I did not know how to test different parts of my system. Going through other people' s testing example actually helped me a lot in this respect.
    2. I did not separate the complex internal logic of my program, from its side-effects. For example put the mapping of the data in the same function as I was doing external requests. You learn how to manage problems like this by practice. But of course, be mindful of the side-effects of your functions. Avoid it when you can.
    3. One other problem I had was that I wrote every test in the same manner. Tests that are not idempotent, and depend on external services, are useful, but you should use the facilities of your language to run them separately from your unit tests. In rust for example we use feature flags.

    Testing and writing functions that can be tested are skills that need practice. For me, many of the patterns of the functional programming helped a lot. Since they insist on pure functions and pure functions are massively easier to test. Learning how people manage to write programs with pure functions may help you a lot, too.

  • prma Perma @programming.dev
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