Tim Chase <python.l...@tim.thechases.com>: > 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? Case in point, systemd configuration files: <URL: http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.servic e.html#Command%20lines> It specifies all kinds of application-do-whatever-it-needs syntax: * backslash escapes * double quotes and single quotes * line continuations * percent specifiers * dollar substitution with or without braces * double-dollar escape * together with undocumented quirks (for example, how do you specify a command whose pathname contains whitespace?) All of which makes it all but impossible to algorithmically escape a literal command into the ExecStart= entry. When you start with something that's too simple, you end up with layers of ever-increasing complexity but never attain the expressive power of JSON, S-expressions and the like (I don't have the stomach to mention XML). Marko -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
