[Python-Dev] ConfigParser mangles keys with special chars

[Terry Reedy]

On 4/25/2014 1:41 PM, Ethan Furman wrote:
> On 04/25/2014 09:46 AM, Fred Drake wrote:
>>
>> At this point, it would be a backward-incompatible change, so it's
>> unlikely such a change could be allowed to affect existing code.
>
> All bug-fixes are backwards-incompatible, yet we fix them anyway.  ;)
>
> It seems to me the real question is do we fix it in 3.5 only, or can we
> fix it in 3.4 and previous?  And the answer depends on whether this
> behavior can be reasonably relied on.

And that depends on whether the current thought-to-be-buggy behavior is 
specified by the doc, compatible with an ambiguous or under-specified 
doc, or prohibited by the doc (because the doc specified something else).

I leave it to someone to carefully read the doc, but a brief glance 
indicates "There are nearly as many INI format variants as there are 
applications using it. configparser goes a long way to provide support 
for the largest sensible set of INI styles available." So I wonder 
whether the thought-to-be-buggy behavior is actually buggy with respect 
to *all* the supported styles or just some of them.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy