bahuvrihi-syckle

= {Syckle}[http://bahuvrihi.github.com/syckle]

A sick little syck loader.

== Description

YAML is great and complete, but load relatively slowly in large part because it loads everything at once. In cases where you need to quickly load a simple YAML configuration file, the overhead is too much.

Syckle is a very simple syck binding that can load basic ruby types: true, false, nil, numbers, strings, symbols, arrays, and hashes. When Syckle.load encounters a more complex object, it autoloads YAML and defers to YAML.load. The result is a quicker-loading, seamless alternative to using YAML.

Benchmarks indicate a require + load using Syckle is about 10x faster than the same using YAML, entirely due to the require time.

== Usage

Simply require syckle instead of yaml. YAML will be set for autoloading as necessary, and can be required at a later time if necessary (although note that using syckle only provides a load-time benefit up until YAML is loaded, duh).

start = Time.now

require 'syckle' Syckle.load("key: value") # => {'key' => 'value'}

puts "#{Time.now-start} s"

=== Bugs/Known Issues

• Syckle seems to work on both Ruby 1.8.* and Ruby 1.9.1. It does not work on JRuby (I don't think JRuby uses syck). One word of caution, for reasons unknown, an autoloading test under 1.9 was found to hang when written one way and not when written in what looks to be an identical way. See {syckle_allows_subsequent_autoloads_test.rb}[http://github.com/bahuvrihi/syckle/tree/master/test/syckle_allows_subsequent_autoloads_test.rb]

== Installation

Syckle is available as a gem on GitHub[http://rubyforge.org/projects/tap]. Use:

% gem install bahuvrihi-syckle

== Info

Copyright (c) 2008, Regents of the University of Colorado. Developer:: {Simon Chiang}[http://bahuvrihi.wordpress.com], {Biomolecular Structure Program}[http://biomol.uchsc.edu/], {Hansen Lab}[http://hsc-proteomics.uchsc.edu/hansenlab/] Support:: CU Denver School of Medicine Deans Academic Enrichment Fund Licence:: {MIT-Style}[link:files/MIT-LICENSE.html]