[Fred]
I agree that the API to ConfigParser sucks, and I think also that the use of it as a general solution is a big mistake. It's a messy bit of code that doesn't need to be, supports a really nasty mix of syntaxes, and can easily bite users who think they're getting something .ini-like (the magic names and interpolation is a bad idea!). While it suited the original application well enough, something with .ini syntax and interpolation from a subclass would have been *much* better. I think we should create a new module, inilib, that implements exactly .ini syntax in a base class that can be intelligently extended. ConfigParser should be deprecated.
Amen. Some thoughts: - You could put it all in ConfigParser.py but with new classnames. (Not sure though, since the ConfigParser class, which is really a kind of weird variant, will be assumed to be the main class because its name is that of the module.) - Variants on the syntax could be given through some kind of option system rather than through subclassing -- they should be combinable independently. Som possible options (maybe I'm going overboard here) could be: - comment characters: ('#', ';', both, others?) - comments after variables allowed? on sections? - variable characters: (':', '=', both, others?) - quoting of values with "..." allowed? - backslashes in "..." allowed? - does backslash-newline mean a continuation? - case sensitivity for section names (default on) - case sensitivity for option names (default off) - variables allowed before first section name? - first section name? (default "main") - character set allowed in section names - character set allowed in variable names - %(...) substitution? (Well maybe the whole substitution thing should really be done through a subclass -- it's too weird for normal use.) --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)