From: "Ara.T.Howard" <ahoward@...>
Date: 2003-12-19T02:11:56+09:00
Subject: Re: Configuration Files

On Thu, 18 Dec 2003, Gavin Sinclair wrote:

> Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 13:51:45 +0900
> From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@soyabean.com.au>
> Newsgroups: comp.lang.ruby
> Subject: Re: Configuration Files
> 
> >
> > That sounds like a great config file system.  I rolled my own basic one
> > not too long ago, but having seen this, I'm thinking I'd replace it. :)
> >
> > One thing I did in mine which I kind of like, but has drawbacks, is a
> > sort of grouping, where:
> > [plugin.player]
> > class=CommandPlayer
> > command=mpg123
> >
> > is the same as:
> > plugin.player.class=CommandPlayer
> > plugin.player.command=mpg123
> >
> 
> I have a really cool way of specifying config files.  It goes like this:
> 
>   plugin:
>     player:
>       class: CommandPlayer
>       command: mpg123
> 
> However, the code for parsing this is a secret :)

i'm with you (and use it myself), but the above is problematic if you actually
want non-programmers to be able to _configure_ a system.  for example, how long
do you think it would take a non-programmer to debug this?

file config.rb:
========
require 'yaml'
config = <<-txt
plugin:
  player:	
    class: CommandPlayer
    command: mpg123
txt
YAML::load(config)


~/eg/ruby > ruby config.rb
/data/ruby-1.8.0//lib/ruby/1.8/yaml.rb:39:in `load': parse error on line 3, col 12: `    command: mpg123' (ArgumentError)
        from /data/ruby-1.8.0//lib/ruby/1.8/yaml.rb:39:in `load'
        from config.rb:8

-a
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