From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2007-01-31T04:36:34+09:00
Subject: Re: Howto parse or eval a config-file?

On Jan 30, 2007, at 1:30 PM, ChrisKaelin wrote:

> I'm currently looking for a simple way to parse a configuration file
> in a ruby-script. Is eval a good way to do that? YAML seems a bit an
> overkill to learn for such a small task...

YAML is pretty darn simple.  You be the judge...

> the config-file:
>
> Conf = {
> 	'host'        => 'localhost',
> 	'title'       => 'TIITEL',
> 	'mailhost'    => 'mailhost'
> }

The equivalent YAML:

---
host: localhost
title: TIITEL
mailhost: mailhost

> the eval-code:
>
> begin
> 		eval File.new(configFile).read
> 		rescue ScriptError=>e
> 		warn("An error occurred while reading #{$configFile}: ", e)
> 	else
> 		$host             = Conf['host']
> 		$title            = Conf['title']
> 		$mailhost         = Conf['mailhost']
> end

And loading code:

conf = File.open("path/to/conf.yaml") { |f| YAML.load(f) }

James Edward Gray II