[Python-Dev] YAML (was Re: Extension to ConfigParser) (original) (raw)

Georg Brandl g.brandl at gmx.net
Tue Jan 31 20:57:18 CET 2006

Guido van Rossum wrote:

But like it or not, configuration files are often used to store data about what a program does - not just the UI options. Storing this in a human readable and editable format is of great advantage.

Yes, a lot of the entries will never be modified by a user - but many will need to be edited and read by a developer. In a production environment importing from python modules is not likely to be safe. Ah. This definitely isn't what ConfigParser was meant to do. I'd think for this you should use some kind of XML pickle though. That's horrible if end users must edit it, but great for saving near-arbitrary persistent data in a readable and occasionally editable (for the developer) form.

While we're at it, is the Python library going to incorporate some YAML parser in the future? YAML seems like a perfectly matching data format for Python.

Georg

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