Yaml Basics and Some Simple Examples (Part 2)

Sometimes you need certain values to appear several times in your yaml file. Instead of copying and pasting, you can use node anchors, which marks a node for future reference. An anchor is denoted by the “&” indicator and a reference is denoted by "*"indicator. For example, in the test_3.yml file in Part 1, if we want the team_3 to have the same members as team_1, we can use node anchors.

test_3.yml

team_1: &team_1_members
  - Brian
  - David
  - Tom

team_2: 
  - Mike
  - Bob
  - Sam

team_3: 
  *team_1_members 

 => {"team_1"=>["Brian", "David", "Tom"], "team_2"=>["Mike", "Bob", "Sam"], "team_3"=>["Brian", "David", "Tom"]}