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NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 01:49:23 -0600
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 08:48:01 +0100
From: David Brown <david@westcontrol.removethisbit.com>
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Subject: Re: file parsing
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Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.os.linux.development.apps:315

On 13/12/2011 23:56, Rainer Weikusat wrote:
> Bill M<wpmccormick@just_about_everywhere.com>  writes:
>> On 12/13/2011 4:38 PM, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>>> XML is a poor choice for config files,
>
> [...]
>
>> I found this for parsing ini config files:
>>
>> http://code.google.com/p/inih/
>>
>> Looks like exactly what I'm looking for.
>
> If your requirements are simple enough, consider not parsing a config
> file: Anything which can be expressed as otherwise unstructured list
> of name=value pairs can be put into a file the shell can source and
> then start another program with a set of command-line arguments
> derived from the parameters.

It also depends on your choice of language.  For example, if the program 
is in Python or Perl, you could have your settings in a Python or Perl 
program - use the language itself as the parser.  Obviously you'll want 
to be careful about security in such cases.