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copied!<p>Consider using plain Python files as configuration files.</p> <p>An example (<code>example.conf</code>):</p> <pre><code># use normal python comments value1 = 32 value2 = u"A unicode value" value3 = "A plain string value" value4 = ["lists", "are", "handy"] value5 = {"and": "so", "are": "dictionaries"} </code></pre> <p>In your program, load the config file using <code>execfile</code> (<a href="http://docs.python.org/library/functions.html#execfile">2.7 docs</a>):</p> <pre><code>if __name__ == "__main__": config = {} execfile("example.conf", config) # python 3: exec(open("example.conf").read(), config) print config["value1"] print config["value5"] </code></pre> <p>I like this approach, for the following reasons:</p> <ul> <li>In the simple case, the format is as easy to author as an INI-style config file. It also shares an important characteristic with INI files: it is very suitable for version control (this is less true for XML and maybe also for JSON)</li> <li>I like the flexibility that comes with having the config file in an actual programming language.</li> </ul> <p>The approach is widely used, a few examples:</p> <ul> <li>A Django site's settings lives inside <a href="https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.3/topics/settings/">settings.py</a>. Django does not use <code>execfile</code>, it uses <code>import</code> to read/execute <code>settings.py</code> AFAIK, but the end result is the same: the code inside the settings file is executed.</li> <li>The bash shell reads and executes <code>~/.bashrc</code> on startup.</li> <li>The Python interpreter imports (and executes) <code>site.py</code> on startup.</li> </ul>

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