Mastering Object-Oriented Python - Second Edition

Design considerations and trade-offs

Configuration files can simplify running application programs or starting servers. This can put all the relevant parameters in one easy-to-read and easy-to-modify file. We can put these files under the configuration control, track change history, and generally use them to improve the software's quality.

We have several alternative formats for these files, all of which are reasonably human-friendly to edit. They vary in how easy they are to parse and any limitations on the Python data that can be encoded:

• INI files: These files are easy to parse and are limited to strings and numbers.
• Python code (PY files): We can use the main script for the configuration; in this case, there will be no additional parsing ...