[Tutor] config file parsing problem.

[Thomi Richards]

Hi guys,


What's the best way to read / write a config file? More specifically:

I have a config file with a series of name = value pairs. This file also has 
comments (line which *start* with a "#" or a ";") amongst the actual data 
lines. At the moment, I am just opening the file, reading it line by line, 
and either ignoring it, or exec()ing the line (I know this isn't very safe, 
but for now it's OK).

Now, the problem comes when I want to write the (sometimes changed) values 
back to this file, without over-writing the comments in the file. What's the 
best way to do this? I thought of creating a dictionary at file-read-time, 
containing name : line_number pairs, and then writing the (changed) values 
back to the same line, but it feels kind of kludgey... Is there a better way? 
I thought of using reg ex to scan for lines which weren't comments, but then 
I'd need to identify what the name was, and what line it was on... And I 
don't know anything about regular expressions.

Any ideas?

Thanks again ;)

-- 
Thomi Richards,
http://once.sourceforge.net/