Most Pythonic way to store (small) configuration

[Tim Chase]

On 2015-08-06 00:47, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
> > There's a certain simplicity to simply having key/value pairs
> > separated by an "=" and then letting the application do whatever
> > it needs/wants with those key/value strings.  
> 
> That trap has lured in a lot of wildlife.
> 
> What to do with lists?
> 
> Is whitespace significant?

As I said, simple.  Lists?  Not in a simple config format.  Though I
suppose, just like the .ini format, you could use a convention of
comma or space-separated list items. Or quoted white-space-separated
items like shlex handles nicely.  Or if you really need, pass the
value portion of the key/value pair through ast.literal_eval()

Significant whitespace?  Not usually simple (just stuck touching a
project where someone committed with tons of trailing whitespaces.
grumble), so strip 'em off as if they're an error condition.  I've
never had a config-file where I wanted leading/trailing whitespace as
significant.

> Case in point, systemd configuration files:

The antithesis of "simplicity" ;-)

-tkc