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ConfigParser and .ini files

Ivan Van Laningham ivanlan at callware.com
Fri Jan 21 13:04:33 EST 2000 
Hi All--

"Fred L. Drake, Jr." wrote:
> 
> super_banane at yahoo.com writes:
>  > The ConfigParser class in the default Python libraries
>  > does not support comments given on the value lines, separated
>  > by a semicolon, such as:
>  >
>  > [Section]
>  > keyword = value ; put your comments here
> 
>   You're right, it doesn't.
>   Does anyone know of a *real* specification for the .ini format?  I
> didn't know this was allowed.
> 

The spec is how Windows treats .ini files. ...

[snip]

> These should really be separated, because what most people want is a
> conventional .ini file parser.

Yup.  That's what I'm looking for this morning!

>   Anyway, I've attached a patch that allows ConfigParser to strip out
> ';' comments from .ini-style entries (using '=' instead of ':' as the
> value separator); RFC822-style entries should *not* be affected.  I
> think this is closer to what you're looking for.
>   I can check this in if this is the right approach.  I'm still not
> happy with the overloaded syntax, but this might be closer to getting
> the syntaxes properly implemented.  People should tell me if this is
> really the right thing to do, and if it breaks anything.
> 

I applied the patch, hoping it would help with my problem, but it
didn't.  Basically, what I'm seeing is two things:

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. ...]

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?

<patiently-awaiting-enlightenment>-ly y'rs,
Ivan
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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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