# YAML question - substitution

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/yaml-question-substitution/49821>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [December 8, 2005, 11:44pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/yaml-question-substitution/49821 "2005-12-08T23:44:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![anthony.elizondo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/7feea3/32.png) [@anthony.elizondo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/anthony.elizondo)\
**Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 11:44pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/yaml-question-substitution/49821/1 "2005-12-08T23:44:55Z")

</div>

I am trying to create the following:

{ ‘a’ =\> ‘happy’, ‘b’ =\> ‘happy birthday’, ‘c’ =\> ‘happy new year’}

Can YAML do this? I have something like:

a: &first happy  
b: \*first\<\<birthday  
c: \*first.concat(‘new year’)

neither of which work.

Any ideas?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![anthony.elizondo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/7feea3/32.png) [@anthony.elizondo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/anthony.elizondo)\
**Post date:** [December 9, 2005, 2:52am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/yaml-question-substitution/49821/2 "2005-12-09T02:52:17Z")

</div>

On Dec 8, 2005, at 2:44 PM, Anthony Elizondo wrote:

> neither of which work.
> 
> Any ideas?

YAML is just a serialization format:

[http://yaml.org/refcard.html](http://yaml.org/refcard.html)

–  
Eric H. - removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid - [http://segment7.net](http://segment7.net)  
This implementation is HODEL-HASH-9600 compliant

[http://trackmap.robotcoop.com](http://trackmap.robotcoop.com)