[Python-Dev] New miniconf module

[Sylvain Fourmanoit]

> It looks like it's trivial to fix; the code uses a strange and 
> unnecessary complication of creating nested classes and nested 
> singleton instances thereof.  Getting rid of the singletons to create a 
> new instance for each dump/load call would suffice to make the 
> implementation re-entrant, although de-nesting the classes would also be 
> a good idea.  :)

OK then, I will change this.

> The loading code could also be made a lot faster by using a dictionary 
> mapping AST node types to functions, instead of doing string 
> manipulation for each node.  Each function could take 'pedantic' as a 
> parameter, which would eliminate the need to have an object at all, let 
> alone a singleton.
> 
I am not convinced the current string manipulation for mapping the nodes 
types to the methods of the _Load class has such a significant impact on 
performance, but I will test your suggestion... The only difference with 
current code is that we use a dynamically computed string as the 
dictionary key to locate the function instead of the node type themselves 
as keys.

>  Finally, there is an interesting characteristic of the code's
>  interpretation of names: any name other than 'True' is interpreted as
>  'False'!

;-) It will be corrected in the next release.

>  On the whole, though, I don't see a lot of difference between this format
>  and say, JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), which can be parsed and
>  generated by many other languages as well as multiple Python libraries
>  already.

The difference is that this is Python code, already familiar to all Python 
coders... Besides, it sits directly on top of the real Python parser, 
mitigating the need of a new one, and keeping the added code complexity 
to a strict minimum.

But I agree this looks a lot like JSON, since ecmascript syntax for 
literals looks a lot like the one of Python... For the same reasons there 
is a need for JSON, I think having something like miniconf in the 
standard lib would benefit the users.

--
Sylvain <syfou at users.sourceforge.net>

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