[Python-ideas] Python 3.9.9 - The 'I Have A Dream' Version

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 08:53:15AM -0700, Simon Kennedy wrote:

> The stdlib is full of modules which don't attempt everything but instead 
> attempt to do a useful subset and everyone seems to be happy they're 
> included.
> 
> Why not configuration file handling?

Python already ships with at least four:

configparser, for INI files;
json, for JSON files;
plistlib, for property lists;
xml, for XML files;

plus pickle and shelve, although they're not human-readable or 
-writable. Also sqlite and various other database interfaces. Again, not 
human-readable, but if Firefox can use sqlite for config information, so 
can Python applications. Plus there are third-party libraries supporting 
(for example) YAML. And Unix *rc style config files are easy to use too. 
They're free-form, so it would be hard to write a generic rc config 
library, but usually simple enough that you can deal with them on an ad 
hoc basis.

Is there an actual concrete problem with config handling that you cannot 
solve easily with Python today?



-- 
Steve