It is important that the comparison between the presentation of data in the test and the data passed to the function being tested be as transparent as possible. Hard-coded data is fully approved if the data is small and easy to observe right in the source. The fewer windows you need to keep open to understand the test case, the better.
XML is best suited for nested tree data, but that's a bit of verbosity. YAML may also be good for this. For flat data, properties and only string files are fine.
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