What is the difference between .yaml and .yml extension?

symfony yaml naming-conventions
lvarayut picture lvarayut · Mar 8, 2014 · Viewed 96.6k times · Source

I read them on YAML-wikipedia but not really understood the main difference between them. I saw there are someone using .yaml extension, however, Symfony2 use .yml extension.

YAML is a human-readable data serialization format that takes concepts from programming languages such as C, Perl, and Python, and ideas from XML and the data format of electronic mail.

YAML is a recursive acronym for "YAML Ain't Markup Language". Early in its development, YAML was said to mean "Yet Another Markup Language",[3] but it was then reinterpreted (backronyming the original acronym) to distinguish its purpose as data-oriented, rather than document markup.

So, how exactly the different between .yaml and .yml? When should we prefer one over the other?

Answer

David Heffernan picture David Heffernan · Mar 8, 2014

File extensions do not have any bearing or impact on the content of the file. You can hold YAML content in files with any extension: .yml, .yaml or indeed anything else.

The (rather sparse) YAML FAQ recommends that you use .yaml in preference to .yml, but for historic reasons many Windows programmers are still scared of using extensions with more than three characters and so opt to use .yml instead.

So, what really matters is what is inside the file, rather than what its extension is.

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