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The docs should prefer .yaml over .yml #39689

@Jayman2000

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@Jayman2000

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What article on docs.github.com is affected?

This is an improvement that could be made throughout the documentation.

What part(s) of the article would you like to see updated?

According to the IANA Media Types list, “yaml” is the preferred file extension for YAML files. “yml” is still a valid file extension, but it’s not preferred. At the moment, it looks like GitHub’s docs use .yml much more often than they use .yaml:

$ cd docs/
$ git grep --fixed-strings .yaml | wc --lines
543
$ git grep --fixed-strings .yml | wc --lines
1328
$ 

There probably are sometimes where using .yml works and using .yaml doesn’t work, but I have a feeling that most of the time the docs could use .yaml instead of .yml. Here’s an example that demonstrates why I think that way:

$ cd docs/
$ git grep --fixed-strings dependabot.yaml | wc --lines
0
$ git grep --fixed-strings dependabot.yml | wc --lines
144
$ 

The docs never mention dependabot.yaml even though dependabot itself supports dependabot.yaml.


I think that it would be better if the docs almost always used .yaml and only used .yml when using it is necessary or when describing that <whatever>.yml can be used instead of <whatever>.yaml.

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