Erroneous Inclusion of Double Quotes for Parsed Double Quoted Strings

I have a YAML file with these(obscured) contents:

hostname: localhost
password: "Password!@#"
port: 61616
username: myuser

and the double quotes around the password make it into the parsed string when calling

this.password = yamlMapping.string("password");

in my code. Therefore, I had to implement a regex-based hack:

this.password = yamlMapping.string("password").replaceAll("^\"|\"$", "");

This is definitely annoying, and I’m almost certain that it’s a bug because I scoured the web looking at pages on YAML for any sign of this behavior in other libraries. I found no evidence that this is the intended behavior / spec.

NB: The double quotes are necessary because the # at the end of the string in the YAML file gets excised since it is the comment character for YAML.

[amihaiemil]

@aquishix By the way, don’t forget that both YamlMapping and YamlSequence are interfaces, so you can decorate them and put that regex logic there, like this:

public final class Escaped implements YamlMapping {

    private final YamlMapping unescaped;

    ...

    public String string(final String key) {
        String value = this.unescaped.string(key);
        return value.replaceAll("^\"|\"$", "");
    }
 
    ...

}

[amihaiemil]

@aquishix I just had a look as well, on yamllint.com and I think you’re right. I also kind of remember from the specification (it was a rather long time ago) that yaml “escapes” special charaters such as # by wrapping the string between double quotes…

So yes, maybe there should be some logic to eliminate double quotes if they are present.

I will fix it, but it will take a few days, I don’t have time right now, sorry. If you need a fix urgently, try making a PR (but make sure the architecture of the library is not broken).