[EMAIL PROTECTED] enlightened us with: > i dont know about your experience with config files, but there > thousands of formats.
All the config files I needed were either very easy to learn, or well documented in comments. > on the python side -- just in this conversation, we mentioned > ConfigObj, ConfigParser and the Config module i linked to. when > everybody writes his own config, you get loads of unique formats. Hence the Python modules. > anyway, for all the cry-babies here that can't edit pickle files. > okay -- just load() them, change what you want, and dump() them. > don't cry. You really need to get real here. Configuration files are for *users*, not programmers. You can't expect a user to learn about Python in general and about pickle in specific. > and if you insist, i'm sure there's a python serializer to > XML/SOAP/whatever other readble format. Which then gives you another configuration format to learn... > and for security issues -- usually config files are edited by > admins, so that's not a problem. You go explain that to someone who just wants to edit his mail client's config file. > and per-user config files (at $HOME), can easily be achieved with > execfile(). Which is then totally insecure. An exploit can easily be made then - just inject a rootkit downloading & starting script into someone's email client configuration file and boom, computer is hacked. > the point is NOT TO WRITE A PARSER for every config file. Hence standard config file formats and parser modules. > * usually admins change the configuration, and they have too much > power anyway Admins have too much power? Go get an education. > * if you worry about security/too much power, pickle your config Sure, and where would you keep your comments explaining the configuration fields? > but inventing proprietary formats with unique syntaxes, and having > to write and debug parsers for them -- that's stupid. Which is why there are standard modules for them. Sybren -- The problem with the world is stupidity. Not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself? Frank Zappa -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list