[Python-Dev] ConfigParser changes

[Guido van Rossum]

> Cleanliness.  I believe in invertible representations.  Whenever I
> write a class, I like to have its str() or repr() emit something
> parseable.  If nothing else, this is useful for debugging.  This is
> just general principles, I don't (unlike my other changes) have a
> use case for it.

I don't like classes whose str() or repr() can be many lines in a
typical case.  Since this is read from a file, there should be (and
is) a method to write it to a file; if there's no use case for
converting the whole shebang to a string, don't provide that, and
especially not as str() or repr().

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)