[Tutor] ConfigParser and multiple option names

[Andrei]

Iyer wrote:
<snop>
> 
> I cannot change the config file layout -- it is a
<snip>
> [dir_options]
> dir="/home/florian"
> dir="/home/john"
<snip>
> what method would you suggest to read each "dir" value
> above from the config_file.lay?

Internally, the ConfigParser implementation uses dictionaries to store 
sections and section contents making it impossible to have duplicate 
sections or option names - this file is against the philosophy of the 
parser.
If these dir values are all you're interested in, you could write a very 
simple parser only for them in a few lines.
Alternatively I think you'll have to trick the parser into thinking 
these are different options by overriding optionxform, to mangle the 
option name and make it unique:

 >>> from random import random
 >>> class DuplicateOptionParser(ConfigParser):
...     def optionxform(self, option):
...         return option.lower() + '____' + str(random()) + str(random())
...
 >>> parser = DuplicateOptionParser()
 >>> parser.read('xyz.ini')
 >>> parser.items('dir_options')
[('dir____0.2893357144260.69151552211', '"/home/whoever"'),
('dir____0.8258732656650.272559810163', '"/home/florian"'),
('dir____0.6565224032210.703769464586', '"/home/john"')]

Note that it will do this for *all* options in your file, even those 
that have no duplicates. You'll have to trim the part starting with 
'____' before using them.

-- 
Yours,

Andrei

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