Python ConfigParser - values between quotes

Question

When using ConfigParser module I would like to use values containing of multiple words set in cfg file. In this case seems trivial for me to surround the string with quotes like (example.cfg):

[GENERAL]
onekey = "value in some words"

My problem is that in this case python appends the quotes to the string as well when using the value like this:

config = ConfigParser()
config.read(["example.cfg"])
print config.get('GENERAL', 'onekey')

I am sure there is an in-built feature to manage to print only 'value in some words' instead of '"value in some words"'. How is it possible? Thanks.

Answer 1

I didn't see anything in the configparser manual, but you could just use the .strip method of strings to get rid of the leading and trailing double quotes.

>>> s = '"hello world"'
>>> s
'"hello world"'
>>> s.strip('"')
'hello world'
>>> s2 = "foo"
>>> s2.strip('"')
'foo'

As you can see, .strip does not modify the string if it does not start and end with the specified string.

Answer 2

Sorry, the solution was trivial as well - I can simply leave the quotes, it looks python simply takes the right side of equal sign.

Answer 3

Davey,

As you say you can just leave the quotes off your string.

For a project I'm working on I wanted to be able to represent almost any Python string literal as a value for some of my config options and more to the point I wanted to be able to handle some of them as raw string literals. (I want that config to be able to handle things like \n, \x1b, and so on).

In that case I used something like:

def EvalStr(s, raw=False):
    r'''Attempt to evaluate a value as a Python string literal or
       return s unchanged.

       Attempts are made to wrap the value in one, then the 
       form of triple quote.  If the target contains both forms
       of triple quote, we'll just punt and return the original
       argument unmodified.

       Examples: (But note that this docstring is raw!)
       >>> EvalStr(r'this\t is a test\n and only a \x5c test')
       'this\t is a test\n and only a \\ test'

       >>> EvalStr(r'this\t is a test\n and only a \x5c test', 'raw')
       'this\\t is a test\\n and only a \\x5c test'
    '''

    results = s  ## Default returns s unchanged
    if raw:
 tmplate1 = 'r"""%s"""'
 tmplate2 = "r'''%s'''"
    else:
 tmplate1 = '"""%s"""'
 tmplate2 = "'''%s'''"

    try:
 results = eval(tmplate1 % s)
    except SyntaxError:
 try:
     results = eval(tmplate2 %s)
 except SyntaxError:
     pass
    return results

... which I think will handle anything that doesn't contain both triple-single and triple-double quoted strings.

(That one corner case is way beyond my requirements).

There is an oddity of this code here on SO; the Syntax highlighter seems to be confused by the fact that my docstring is a raw string. That was necessary to make doctest happy for this particular function).

Answer 4

import ConfigParser

class MyConfigParser(ConfigParser.RawConfigParser):
    def get(self, section, option):
        val = ConfigParser.RawConfigParser.get(self, section, option)
        return val.lstrip('"').rstrip('"')

if __name__ == "__main__":
    #config = ConfigParser.RawConfigParser()
    config = MyConfigParser()

    config.read(["example.cfg"])
    print config.get('GENERAL', 'onekey')