Parsing files

[Skip Montanaro]

    >> http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/spambayes/spambayes/spambayes/Options.py?rev=1.104

    Rob> thanks, I've taken a look but I'm still unclear as to how the
    Rob> defaults work.  At the moment my config file has no section but
    Rob> when I create a new ConfigParser it complains that no sections are
    Rob> defined (so the parse fails).  Can I fool the ConfigParser by
    Rob> defining an 'empty' default and if do you know how?

I believe ConfigParser (and INI-type files in general) expect all options to
be grouped into sections.  If you don't need/want sections, why not just add
a [general] section into which you put all your options?  Failing that, you
could probably fudge things with something like this (untested):

    import tempfile
    import ConfigParser

    def parse_config_file(f):
        fd, fn = tempfile.mkstemp()

        # create a temporary config file with a dummy section
        cfg = os.fdopen(fd)
        cfg.write("[general]\n")
        cfg.write(file(f).read())
        cfg.close()

        # parse it
        config = ConfigParser.ConfigParser()
        config.read(fn)

        os.unlink(fn)

        return config

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