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Last active October 9, 2025 17:55
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Read YAML file from Bash script
MIT License
Copyright (c) 2014 Piotr Kuczynski
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
#!/bin/sh
parse_yaml() {
local prefix=$2
local s='[[:space:]]*' w='[a-zA-Z0-9_]*' fs=$(echo @|tr @ '\034')
sed -ne "s|^\($s\)\($w\)$s:$s\"\(.*\)\"$s\$|\1$fs\2$fs\3|p" \
-e "s|^\($s\)\($w\)$s:$s\(.*\)$s\$|\1$fs\2$fs\3|p" $1 |
awk -F$fs '{
indent = length($1)/2;
vname[indent] = $2;
for (i in vname) {if (i > indent) {delete vname[i]}}
if (length($3) > 0) {
vn=""; for (i=0; i<indent; i++) {vn=(vn)(vname[i])("_")}
printf("%s%s%s=\"%s\"\n", "'$prefix'",vn, $2, $3);
}
}'
}
#!/bin/sh
# include parse_yaml function
. parse_yaml.sh
# read yaml file
eval $(parse_yaml zconfig.yml "config_")
# access yaml content
echo $config_development_database
development:
adapter: mysql2
encoding: utf8
database: my_database
username: root
password:
@Blackjacx
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We use yq too 👍

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