Overview

Human-Readable File Formats

Human-readable file formats, unlike binary formats, can be directly opened, viewed, and edited with text editors. These formats range from data interchange formats like JSON, YAML, and XML, to tabular data formats like CSV and TSV, to markup languages like Markdown and HTML, serving various purposes. These formats prioritize readability and portability, playing a crucial role in data sharing between different systems and configuration management.

file format data interchange configuration file text-based serialization markup language

code	slug	name	description	extensions
json	javascript-object-notation	JSON	A lightweight data interchange format that represents data as key-value pairs, easy for humans to read and write.	[".json"]
jsonl	json-lines	JSON Lines	A format where each line contains one JSON object, suitable for log files and streaming data processing.	[".jsonl",".ndjson"]
xml	extensible-markup-language	XML	A markup language that structures data using tags, commonly used for data storage and transmission.	[".xml"]
yaml	yaml-aint-markup-language	YAML	A data serialization format for representing data structures in a human-readable form, commonly used for configuration files.	[".yaml",".yml"]
toml	tom-s-obvious-minimal-language	TOML	A simple configuration file format emphasizing key-value pairs for readable configuration files.	[".toml"]
csv	comma-separated-values	CSV	A simple and widely used tabular data format that represents data as comma-separated values.	[".csv"]
tsv	tab-separated-values	TSV	A simple tabular data format that represents data as tab-separated values. Similar to CSV but uses different delimiter.	[".tsv"]
env	environment-variables	ENV	A simple key-value pair format for defining environment variables, widely used for application configuration management.	[".env"]
ini	intitialization-files	INI	A simple configuration file format that stores settings as sections and key-value pairs.	[".ini"]
properties	properties	Properties	A simple configuration file format widely used in Java applications that stores settings as key-value pairs.	[".properties"]
md	markdown	Markdown	A lightweight markup language for writing text in an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format that converts to structured documents.	[".md",".markdown"]
rst	restructuredtext	reStructuredText	A lightweight markup language used for creating technical documentation, especially standard for Python documentation.	[".rst",".rest"]
html	hypertext-markup-language	HTML	A markup language for describing the structure and content of web pages.	[".html",".htm"]

A list of text-based file formats that humans can directly read and write, used for data interchange and configuration files.