[Wellington-pm] Complex config files

Lesley Longhurst lrw at clear.net.nz
Wed May 13 23:04:49 PDT 2009


Thanks for all the input.  Looking at what we already have installed on 
our servers, it's probably either going to be XML::Simple or YAML. Not 
that that it's hard to install a CPAN module or anything, but I really 
dislike unnecessary bloatage.

(On further reflection I've decided that for my current purpose human 
editing may not be required after all)

Lesley Longhurst wrote:
> Hi all,
> Some of you may remember a while ago I brought in some code from work 
> to talk about, and it was based around a truly hideous config file.
>
> I'm now working on replacing some of that stuff with a new script, and 
> the time has come to invent a better config file format. So, I'm 
> interested in recommendations for a good module to use for reading and 
> writing complex config files.
>
> Ideally, such a module would meet the following requirements:
> - well-documented
> - currently supported
> - a usable version available in a Debian package for Etch
>
> and the config file itself needs to
> - be easily read and edited by humans
> - support repeated sub-sections
> - allow multiple entries for parameters within the same section and 
> sub-section
> - allow for lots of comments
>
> Any suggestions?
>
> By way of example, I've attached a first cut of the sort of thing I'm 
> thinking of (and for your amusement I've also attached a fragment of 
> the existing config file that I derived it from.)



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