Stringify: My merge keys are surrounded with quotes ""

[alexbjorlig]

I attempt to stringify this object with stringify(//, {schema: 'yaml-1.1'}):

{
  name: "test",
  model: [
    { name: "general information", cc: { ['<<']: "*section"} },
  ]
}

I get this:

name: v4
model:
  - name: General information
    cc:
      <<: "*section"

But the above does not work, because *section is surrounded with ". How can I fix this?

[eemeli]

It looks like you're trying to create a YAML alias, but you're getting a YAML scalar because the input value *section is getting escaped to avoid having it parsed as an alias. This is intentional, as otherwise the resulting YAML document would be invalid.

When working with a YAML.Document object, you could manually create an alias with new YAML.Alias() and enter it into the document contents with something like doc.setIn(['model', 0, 'cc', '<<'], ...), but stringifying this will fail if the document does not also include the anchor for the alias. This is why the doc.createAlias() utility method is provided, as it'll ensure that the source has an anchor matching the alias.

[alexbjorlig]

Thanks so much for providing such a helpful comment. I'm pretty new to working with YAML, but it makes sense 👍. Will try to modify the code so it works correctly.