How to retrieve value from etc/sysconfig in Python

Question

Hi All,

I have a config file FOO in /etc/sysconfig/. This Linux file is very similar to INI-File, but without a section declaration.

In order to retrieve a value from this file, I used to write a shell script like:

source /etc/sysconfig/FOO
echo $MY_VALUE

Now I want to do the same thing in python. I tried to use ConfigParser, but ConfigParser does not accept such an INI-File similar format, unless it has a section declaration.

Is there any way to retrieve value from such a file?

Answer 1

I suppose you could do exactly what you're doing with your shell script using the subprocess module and reading it's output. Use it with the shell option set to True.

Answer 2

If you want to use ConfigParser, you could do something like:

#! /usr/bin/env python2.6

from StringIO import StringIO
import ConfigParser

def read_configfile_without_sectiondeclaration(filename):
    buffer = StringIO()
    buffer.write("[main]\n")
    buffer.write(open(filename).read())
    buffer.seek(0)
    config = ConfigParser.ConfigParser()
    config.readfp(buffer)
    return config

if __name__ == "__main__":
    import sys
    config = read_configfile_without_sectiondeclaration(sys.argv[1])
    print config.items("main")

The code creates an in-memory filelike object containing a [main] section header and the contents of the specified file. ConfigParser then reads that filelike object.