On 2015-08-02 21:54, Ben Finney wrote:
> So, both XML and JSON should be considered write-only, and produced
> only for consumption by a computer; they are a poor choice for
> presenting to a human.
>
> The “INI” format as handled by the Python ‘configparser’ module is
> what I would recommend for a simple flat configuration file. It is
> more intuitive to edit, and has a conventional commenting format.
I second Ben's thoughts against XML & JSON -- they *can* be edited by
hand, but put the onus on the user to make perfect XML/JSON. Config
files (".ini") are more forgiving.
However, the .ini format (or at least the stdlib implementation in
ConfigParser.py) is not without its faults, mostly when you read a
file, then write it back out:
- comments and blank lines get lost in the process:
[section]
# set to local configuration
location=path/to/foo
will get written out as
[section]
location=path/to/foo
- the order of options is not preserved:
[section]
thing=1
other=2
may get written back out as
[section]
other=2
thing=1
though this has improved once ConfigParser started attempting to
use an OrderedDict by default for internal storage.
- a single key can only appear once in a section:
[section]
option=one
option=two
gets written back out as
[section]
option=two
- implicit encoding (is it UTF-8, Latin-1, etc?)
When you understand that the underlying internal storage is a dict
(ordered or unordered, depending on availability), a lot of the above
makes sense. But it still makes me wish for the power of git's
config-file format that seems to preserve original config files much
better.
An additional option is using a sqlite database. The sqlite
library is part of the stdlib, and advantages include being a single
file, expandability, consistent/reliable character encoding,
cross-platform portability, and atomicity (utilities that read/write
are blocked from getting/creating incomplete data seen by the other
file).
-tkc
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