[Python-Dev] CVS: python/dist/src/Lib ConfigParser.py,1.16,1.17 (original) (raw)

Greg Stein gstein@lyra.org
Sat, 4 Mar 2000 02:05:15 -0800 (PST)

On Sat, 4 Mar 2000, Moshe Zadka wrote:

On Fri, 3 Mar 2000, Jeremy Hylton wrote: > It sounds like ConfigParser code and docs could use a general cleanup. > Are there any other issues to take care of as part of that cleanup?

One thing that bothered me once: I want to be able to have something like: [section] tag = 1 tag = 2 And be able to retrieve ("section", "tag") -> ["1", "2"]. Can be awfully useful for things that make sense several time. Perhaps there should be two functions, one that reads a single-tag and one that reads a multi-tag?

Structured values would be nice. Several times, I've needed to decompose the right hand side into lists.

File format: I'm sure I'm going to get yelled at, but why don't we make it XML? Hard to edit, yadda, yadda, but you can easily write a special purpose widget to edit XConfig (that's what we'll call the DTD) files.

Write a whole new module. ConfigParser is for files that look like the above.

There isn't a reason to NOT use XML, but it shouldn't go into ConfigParser.

I find the above style much easier for *humans*, than an XML file, to specify options. XML is good for computers; not so good for humans.

Cheers, -g

-- Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/