Parsing a conf file

[Gerhard Häring]

John Hunter wrote:
>>>>>> "Simon" == Simon Faulkner <news at titanic.co.uk> writes:
> 
>    Simon> Hello All, Is there a simple / recommended way of parsing a
>    Simon> setting from a conf file?
> 
> 
>    Simon> server = Stafford
> 
> It depends somewhat on the format of the whole file, but for a first
> pass
> 
> conf = {}
> for line in file('test.conf'):
>    vals = line.split('=')
>    if len(vals)!=2: continue
>    key, val = vals
>    conf[key.strip()] = val.strip()

Instead of the check wether only one equal sign is found in the line,
I'd rather do:

vals = line.split('=', 1)

This second "maxsplit" argument to split is often quite useful :-)

Of course if the file really has Python syntax, you could just use
execfile as a quick hack:

---------8<-----------------------
# This is the config file
smtp_server = "mail.my.domain.test"
--------->8-----------------------

---------8<-----------------------
def get_config(filename):
    my_globals, my_locals = {}, {}
    execfile(filename, my_globals, my_locals)
    return my_locals
--------->8-----------------------

-- Gerhard