[py-configparser-devel] missing files treatment

[Ury Marshak]

Erik Huelsmann wrote:
> I'd say this is indeed the intended behaviour. The code which is
> currently there just seems broken to me. I'll commit your change later
> tonight and release a new version. (Unless you have more
> bugs/improvements to report, in which case it's probably better to
> release all of it at once...)
>
> If I may be so bold: what do you (plan to) use py-configparser for?
>
>   
Well, I didn't use it for much (yet), so that's the only thing that I've
seen for now.
My needs are pretty basic: read some values from a file, which is in a
format familiar
to many people (especially Windows administrators kind of people). So I
can have
a small tool that hooks up with an existing database and I can just tell
the admin to
"edit the .INI" and there's a good chance they'll feel right at home.
Easy syntax,
basically just a=b, not  a lot of opportunities to screw up. The other
options are
to use the Lisp reader (problems with security, hard to get syntax right
for non-lispers)
and to invent some other format (what's the point when this one works
well), so
py-configparser seems perfect for me.

I actually _do_ have one suggestion, although it's not directly related
to the code and
also may seem a little drastic :) , and that is to rename the library
(maybe to something
like just "configparser").  TBH, I don't see the point of "py-" part of
the name.
Of course, it's interface is (somewhat, I guess) modeled after python's
module, but
that warrants only a honorable mention in the docs, not the name. As it
is, "py" in
the name suggests for me some kind of "runtime" connection to python,
which is
misleading and actually unfair for a nice pure-lisp general-purpose
library. There's
also a chance that with the interface can be changed slightly (no,
nothing specific,
just that some patterns may emerge with usage that will be expressed
easily in  a
more lispy way) and it's good not to be limited by the name. Of course
that's not
a serious issue, but if we are talking suggestions, I couldn't but
mention it.  And yes,
that can happen in practice - I was actually mislead by the name and
read it as
"a library to parse (some sort of) configuration of python itself" at
first, before
having a look at it. Certainly, it could've been just me being dense :)

Thanks,
Ury