can ConfigParser deal with repeating section header?

[Tim Chase]

On 2015-11-12 07:47, John Zhao wrote:
> I have a configuration file with repeating sections, for example, 
> 
> [INSTANCE]
> Name=a
> 
> [INSTANCE]
> Name=b
> 
> I hope I can use ConfigParser to read the file and store the
> configuration settings in arrays.  
> 
> Is that possible?

Not with the standard library's ConfigParser:

  >>> from cStringIO import StringIO
  >>> from ConfigParser import ConfigParser
  >>> ini = StringIO("""[INSTANCE]
  ... Name=a
  ...
  ... [INSTANCE]
  ... Name=b
  ... """)
  >>> cp = ConfigParser()
  >>> cp.readfp(ini)
  >>> cp.sections() # note: only one section
  ['INSTANCE']
  >>> cp.get("INSTANCE", "Name") # note: only the last value
  'b'

It also fails to catch multiple values with the same key:

  [INSTANCE]
  Name=a
  Name=b

doesn't give you

  cp.get("INSTANCE", "Name") == ["a", "b"]


-tkc