Config files with different types

[Zach Hobesh]

yaml looks pretty interesting.  Also, I wouldn't have to change much,
I would still use the same function, and still output a dict.

Thanks!

-Zach

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 11:55 PM, Javier Collado<javier.collado at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Have you considered using something that is already developed?
>
> You could take a look at this presentation for an overview of what's available:
> http://us.pycon.org/2009/conference/schedule/event/5/
>
> Anyway, let me explain that, since I "discovered" it, my favourite
> format for configuration files is yaml (http://yaml.org/,
> http://pyyaml.org/). It's easy to read, easy to write, available in
> different programming languagues, etc. In addition to this, type
> conversion is already in place so I think it covers your requirement.
> For example:
>
> IIn [1]: import yaml
>
> In [2]: yaml.load("""name: person name
>   ...: age: 25
>   ...: is_programmer: true""")
> Out[2]: {'age': 25, 'is_programmer': True, 'name': 'person name'}
>
> Best regards,
>    Javier
>
> 2009/7/2 Zach Hobesh <hobesh at gmail.com>:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I've written a function that reads a specifically formatted text file
>> and spits out a dictionary.  Here's an example:
>>
>> config.txt:
>>
>> Destination = C:/Destination
>> Overwrite = True
>>
>>
>> Here's my function that takes 1 argument (text file)
>>
>> the_file = open(textfile,'r')
>> linelist = the_file.read().split('\n')
>> the_file.close()
>> configs = {}
>> for line in linelist:
>>       try:
>>              key,value = line.split('=')
>>              key.strip()
>>              value.strip()
>>              key.lower()
>>              value.lower()
>>              configs[key] = value
>>
>>       except ValueError:
>>              break
>>
>> so I call this on my config file, and then I can refer back to any
>> config in my script like this:
>>
>> shutil.move(your_file,configs['destination'])
>>
>> which I like because it's very clear and readable.
>>
>> So this works great for simple text config files.  Here's how I want
>> to improve it:
>>
>> I want to be able to look at the value and determine what type it
>> SHOULD be.  Right now, configs['overwrite'] = 'true' (a string) when
>> it might be more useful as a boolean.  Is there a quick way to do
>> this?  I'd also like to able to read '1' as an in, '1.0' as a float,
>> etc...
>>
>> I remember once I saw a script that took a string and tried int(),
>> float() wrapped in a try except, but I was wondering if there was a
>> more direct way.
>>
>> Thanks in advance,
>>
>> Zach
>> --
>> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>>
>