ConfigParser and .ini files

[Ivan Van Laningham]

Hi All--

"Fred L. Drake, Jr." wrote:
> 
> Ivan Van Laningham writes:
>  > The spec is how Windows treats .ini files. ...
> 
>   That's a huge problem for those of us who don't often use Windows.
> If anyone has tried to document the format with real details, I'd love
> to get a pointer to the description.
> 

I'll take a look at the windocs later today.

>  > 1)  Section headers of the form "[Button States]" come up as
>  > ParsingError because of the whitespace.  I read the regex for the
>  > headers as allowing whitespace in the header, so what's going on here?
>  > Here's the regex:
>  >
>  >  __SECTCRE = re.compile(
>  >         r'\['                                 # [
>  >         r'(?P<header>[-\w]+)'                 # `-', `_' or any alphanum
>  >         r'\]'                                 # ]
>  >         )
>  >
>  > Not being a regex guru (not even an acolyte), I'm probably unqualified
>  > to evaluate it.  What should this be to allow whitespace in section
>  > names?  [*lots* of .ini files have whitespace in the section names. ...]
> 
>   Add a space before or after the \w in the regex.

Works beautifully.  Thanks.

>   Are there any characters *not* allowed in the section names?  Are
> section names supposed to be case-sensitive?
> 

An informal survey (grepping my winnt/*.ini files) reveals: 
alphanumeric, tabs and spaces, -, _, ., (, ), *, commas, { and }. 
Pretty much any character that is legal in a dos/win filename appears to
be legal as a section name.
 
>  > 2)  The ParsingError lists the lines it thinks are bad at the end of the
>  > run, but they come up like this on the listing:
>  >
>  >         [line  5]: '[Button States]\012'
>  >         [line 23]: '[CallWare Archive]\012'
>  >
>  > Now, is this because ConfigParser thinks it's on UNIX, because it treats
>  > everything as a UNIX file, because it is not expecting the '\r\n'
>  > combination, or because it's broken?
> 
>   This is because the files are opened in text mode, and CR/LF is
> represented as LF internally.  This is normal.  The only error was
> that the space wasn't allowed in the section name, as you pointed
> out.
>

OK, thanks.

<is-it-an-ini-or-an-outi?>-ly y'rs,
Ivan;-)
----------------------------------------------
Ivan Van Laningham
Callware Technologies, Inc.
ivanlan at callware.com
ivanlan at home.com
http://www.pauahtun.org
See also: 
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html
Army Signal Corps:  Cu Chi, Class of '70
Author:  Teach Yourself Python in 24 Hours
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