[Tutor] I Give Up. - Follow up post

[Danny Yoo]

> Now, if I want to iterate over a list of machines , and check each 
> machine for whatever it was set for (in the config file)

> So the config file requires http to be the first part of the string , 
> followed by something to make it unique (I.E. http1, http2, http3)


Hi Brian,

Have you considered using something other than the INI-style file format? 
ConfigParser works best when there is a fixed, known set of keys: it 
doesn't work so well when you want to use an arbitrary collection where 
you do not know the keys in advance.


Bluntly put: it does sound like the INI file format and what you 
ultimately want is not meshing well together.

Let's clarify the requirement: you want to have a mapping from services to 
their configurations.  Ignoring the format of the configuration file for 
the moment, it sounds like you ultimately want to parse the configruation 
and get:

     { 'apache'     : ('http', 80),
       ... }

where a 'machine' is the key into the corresponding (protocol, port) 
value.

If you are just prototyping this, a 'module' file like:

####################################
### machine_config.py
machines = { 'apache': ('http', 80),
              ## fill me in with the config of other machines
}
####################################

could be used as your configuration file format.  The value portion of a 
dictionary can be an arbitrary value.  Here, we map a machine's name to a 
tuple containing the protocol and port.  No string hackery is involved 
here.



> believe me I have tried dictionaries, Ive tried parsing the file by 
> other means, but the only way I could get results I needed was through 
> configparser

I think you're making this problem too hard for yourself.



> Yeah, basically you carry values in a dictionary named by keyname , 
> but..  there have been situations where I need the key name as the 
> variable name , I.E. config_options[name] = value could become
>
> name = value as if it was explicitly defined that way


Can you show us the situation you're talking about that requires this?



> It's difficult to grasp or even effectively explain the concept or idea,

Try to do so.  I think this is a real point that needs to be cleared up.



> Agreed. however I just set this as a preliminary - in no way is this 
> code finished. :)  I actually intended to build a function to do this. 
> (In perl, I use Switch/Case statements, does Python have anything 
> similar?  - with switch/case, you can set a final default "catch-all" at 
> which point I log a "unknown event" message )

Take a look at:

http://www.python.org/doc/faq/general.html#why-isn-t-there-a-switch-or-case-statement-in-python

If you need more examples, ask, and someone here on the list will be happy 
to help.