This question may be seen as subjective, but I'd like to ask SO users which common structured textual data format is best supported in Python.
My initial choices are:
Which of these three is easiest to work with in Python (ie. has the best library support / performance) ... or is there another format that I haven't mentioned that is better supported in Python.
I cannot use a Python only format (e.g. Pickling) since interop is quite important, but the majority of the code that handles these files will be written in Python, so I'm keen to use a format that has the strongest support in Python.
CSV or fixed column text may also be viable for most use cases, however I'd prefer the flexibility of a more scalable format.
Thank you
Regarding interop I will be generating these files initially from Ruby, using Builder, however Ruby will not be consuming these files again.
I would go with JSON, I mean YAML is awesome but interop with it is not that great.
XML is just an ugly mess to look at and has too much fat.
Python has a built-in JSON module since version 2.6.